“Fancy rats are all the rage among the gentry, Bill says. I thought she could join her friends in the tip.”
“No.” Caz strokes the rat’s head with a finger. “Let us be fashionable, too. We’ll keep her as a pet.”
“We’ll need a box. Food and water.”
“Now?”
“After we’ve slept.”
Caz puts the fancy rat into the front of her dress, then lies on the ground.
Soon all three of us are asleep.
. . . that I discovered more of the secret life of the Court of Governance.
I was lying in a hollow to which I had been sent by Swylar after the ceremony, when, in the quiet, I sensed that a stranger was nearby.
I sniffed the air, and at that moment, I saw, sidling between two stones, an adult buck.
— You have been played for a fool, Efren.
The stranger remained in the shadows. His revelation was low and intimate.
— Who are you? I asked.
— My name is not important. Follow me.
Ignoring my aching body, I followed the rat, keeping him a few lengths in front of me the whole time. He took me through a network of tunnels behind the court, until eventually, we came to a clearing where two paths intersected. A slab of ancient brickwork lay almost blocking the path.
The stranger scuttled over the brick, marking it with his scent.
— This is where the court sends its undesirables.
And then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows.
I was alone. There was no noise except the distant sounds of humans going about their business in the world above.
I looked around me. Was this some kind of a trap? Then I heard the faintest sound. It seemed to come from below my feet. I approached the slab. Sniffing, I noticed a crevice beside the brick. I put my nose to it and knew in that instant what, who, it was that I was smelling.
— Floke! Fang! Are you there?
A faint sound, somewhere between a groan and a gasp, came in reply. I pressed with my nose, pausing occasionally to look downward. There seemed to be some kind of pipe, at the end of which I could see the faint outline of rat shapes.
Desperate now, I pushed harder. I took a step back and hurled myself at the slab. It shifted, and nose first, I found myself slithering downward. My fall seemed to be in slow motion but was broken by the softness of a body. It was Floke.
His eyes were open but flecked with dust, his coat matted and dull from lack of food. The flesh around his mouth was stiff with dried foam. A faint smell of approaching death clung to him. When he revealed, it was weak, hardly a thought at all.
— They got you, too.
I saw now that we were in a hollow. Our only escape was up the sheer clay pipe above our heads. Only the strongest warrior rat would find purchase with his claws on the smooth surface. From the darkness across the cell, there came a low moan.
— Fang?
I moved closer. It was a horrible sight. The poison in Fang’s injured right leg was bloated and swollen. It had reached the top of the thigh and was about to spread through his body.
— We have to do something about him, Floke.
But even as I revealed, I knew that Floke was too weak to do anything for his brother. I crouched down, placing my head close to Fang’s.
— There’s only one way to save you. Push yourself into the corner.
With a feeble scrabbling of his hind legs, Fang wedged himself against the wall. He closed his eyes, delivering a brief revelation.
— Do what you must.
I stood over the infected leg. I moved closer until the stench of poison made me dizzy. There was no question, only action. I knew what I had to do.
I tested the flesh briefly, pressing my teeth against the spongy thigh until yellow poison oozed through the hard skin. I bit gently nearer Fang’s body. The poison was there, too.
At last, above the elbow, where leg met body, the flesh was firm and uninfected.
I closed my eyes, willing myself to be strong. Then I bit hard. Ignoring the violent start of pain that racked Fang’s body, forcing it against the wall behind him, I gnawed through the muscle, then into gristle and bone.
In no time at all, my teeth had done their work. Fang’s leg lay on the floor of the cell. Head pounding, I picked his leg up in my aching jaws and flicked it away. Then, licking like a doe cleaning her newborn ratlings, I began to work on the bleeding wound on Fang’s body.
Floke staggered across the cell and, perhaps out of thirst as much as through any sense of comradeship, also licked at the wound. Soon the saliva of the two of us had helped the flesh congeal before Fang’s lifeblood had flowed away.
He lay, semiconscious, his body twitching occasionally. Floke and I, our tongues raw, our faces and necks covered in the blood of our friend, rested at last.
It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes before I was woken by the sound of movement. I looked up. The stone above our heads was slowly moving. There was the unmistakable scent of adult rat in the air.
I knew that smell.
I nudged Floke with my nose.
— It’s Swylar. He’s come for us.
Floke half opened his eyes. His breath was uneven as life was slipping away from him. Rescue, if this was rescue, may have come too late.
There was a chattering of teeth above my head. It was not friendly.
— You stupid young thing, — Swyler revealed. — What more do you want? You were born a nobody, sent to the Tasting Court. Yet you are now a courtier, praised by the queen of the people, applauded as a hero. Some hero! Your first night in court and you try to run away.
I tried to sound defiant as I revealed in reply. — Why did you leave my friends to die?
Swylar snickered.
— They are warriors. The whole point of warriors is that they die. Leave them, you little fool. Or in the end, are you no brighter than your dying warrior friends?
And suddenly I knew. As Swylar wheedled, I was aware of another voice. As clearly as I had once sensed the heartbeat of my dying king across the rooftops of the world above, the voice of Jeniel reached me from another place and another time.
— The ratling cannot die. The kingdom will not accept his disappearance so soon into my reign. We need Efren at court. Do it, Swylar!
I was hearing.
I wondered, just for a moment, whether I should reveal to Swylar that I had the gift of hearing, that I was able to sense revelations across time and space.
No. That would remain my secret for the moment.
— Swylar.
A nasty chattering of teeth could be heard from beyond the brick slab.
— Changed your mind, ratling?
— I shall return with you to court.
— Good. Then —
— But only if you save my friends. Treat their wounds. Save their lives and give them work at court, and I shall serve you and the queen like a loyal subject.
— Making terms, are we? From a dungeon. What a peculiar little thing you are, Efren.
I remained still.
Silence. Then, at last, an angry revelation.
— There is another entrance. — Swylar tried to disguise his defeat by a show of impatience. — I shall send some guards to fetch you.
— Only if you agree.
Swylar’s nose, then his teeth, and then his entire mouth appeared at what was left of the opening.
— You have your way this time. But one day you will find that I am not always so giving.
From behind me I heard the sound of distant gnawing. The rescuers were on their way.
. . . and of how she had come to be lying in a doorway, her only possession in the world — a pair of dancing shoes — in her hands.
Late at night, in our house of rubbish, she talks sometimes about her past. Her eyes are distant, her voice quiet.
She tells me of when she was not Caz, but Catherine Lewis, and of her mother, Mary Lewis. Mary was young, beautiful, lost in her life. Sh
e taught her only daughter one lesson — how to make herself invisible when voices are raised and punches are being thrown. Caz says it was the most important lesson of her life. When she speaks of her father, her eyes grow hard. She does not like to speak of him, of her memories of Bob Lewis.
When Bob came home — and that was not often — life for Catherine became louder and more dangerous. He was angry at the world, and he took out his anger on Mary. And Catherine. The merest look in his direction would set him off.
Bob drank. Bob stole. Bob shouted. Bob hit.
And then, one happy day, Bob left, never to return.
After that, Mary would go out most nights, leaving Catherine in the attic room where they lived. When she returned, it was usually with a man.
The days were all right. Caz remembers the good things — the sun shining through the grimy window, her mother talking of the future when, she promised, the two of them would leave the town to live in a place of fields, with chickens and pigs in the yard outside.
The nights were different. Catherine tried to sleep or, when she could not, she pretended she was sleeping.
A gentleman of middle age, smartly dressed and with a neat gray beard, took to visiting her mother. Mr. Knightley. He would pace the room, filling it with the exotic perfumes that he liked to wear, talking and talking, trying to get Catherine, lying in her bed, eyes tight shut, to join the conversation.
Other men would stay in the shadows of her mother’s side of the room. Mr. Knightley liked the light. He would strut around, sometimes singing songs from the opera in a surprisingly deep voice. He wanted to be noticed.
When Catherine called him “Mr. Knightley,” he laughed.
“I am Ralph,” he said, pronouncing the name as if to rhyme with “safe.” He smiled. “We are going to be friends, Catherine.”
One night he asked her to dance for him.
She was sleepy, but when her mother insisted, she climbed out of bed. As Mr. Knightley sang one of his songs, tapping his knees with his hands in time with the beat, she skipped across the candlelit floor in her flannel nightdress.
He was delighted. Dancing became part of the evenings he spent there. Sensing that the better the show she put on for Mr. Knightley, the happier her mother would be, Catherine spun and twirled around the room, a fixed smile on her face.
“She has a talent,” Mr. Knightley said. “She has a real talent, Mary.”
One night, returning home with Mr. Knightley, Catherine’s mother seemed strangely happy.
“Ralph has a surprise for you,” she said.
Mr. Knightley sat on the edge of Catherine’s bed and took her hand.
“You are to be a dancer, Catherine,” he said. “You might be famous one day.”
“Famous? How?”
“You’re a very lucky girl, Catherine.” Her mother’s eyes shone in the candlelight. “You are to go to a dancing school.”
Mr. Knightley said he had a friend who ran a school near the center of town. Her name was Madame Irina Blavitsky, and she had once been a very great dancer. She had agreed to take Catherine on a dancing scholarship.
“Dear Ralph. You’re so kind,” her mother said. “Isn’t he, Catherine?”
“Yes. Thank you, Ralph.”
He squeezed her hand.
“Will I go every day?” she asked.
“Scholarship girls stay with Madame Irina.” Mr. Knightley spoke quickly, as if he would quite like to change the subject. “That’s how they learn to dance and become famous.”
“Stay? And then I come home?”
Catherine remembers that she looked at her mother and noticed that her lower lip was trembling.
“Not for a while,” said Mr. Knightley.
“Mother?”
Mary Lewis looked at her now. There were tears in her eyes.
“Do you want to help your mother, Catherine?” she asked softly.
Catherine nodded.
“Well, then.”
“That’s settled.” Mr. Knightley stood up and glanced at the gold timepiece that he kept in his waistcoat. “It’s all very, very good.”
The following week Catherine took her first, and only, trip in a carriage. With her mother and Mr. Knightley, she crossed town. At her feet was a small suitcase containing the few possessions she had in the world.
They reached a large house. Mr. Knightley stepped out of the carriage. Catherine’s mother held her close, both of them crying, then pushed her away.
As Catherine stepped out, the door to the great house opened and there stood a tiny woman, dressed in black, her dark hair tied back in a bun.
“Ah, mes enfants!” By her front door, Madame Irina flung out her arms, as if greeting her oldest friends. “You are ’eeere at last!”
It was the strangest accent Catherine had ever heard. She remembers that as young and frightened as she was then, she sensed it was the voice of a person who was pretending to be something she was not.
They ascended the steps. As she drew closer, Catherine saw that the ballet mistress, who at first glance seemed as delicate and graceful as a small bird, was more frightening when you stood close to her. Her face was covered in white powder, like a clown’s. Her thin lips were painted red, like a fresh scar. Her nose was unusually sharp and beak-like.
Madame Irina’s dark eyes glittered as Catherine curtsied just as Mr. Knightley had instructed her.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Mr. Knightley said. “This is Catherine.”
“Ah, she is so jolie!” It was as if Madame Irina had only just noticed Catherine. She looked down and held Catherine’s chin between two bony fingers. “She ’as the face of a dunce air.”
While Knightley spoke to Madame Irina, Catherine glanced back to the carriage. Her mother was still sitting there, her face in the shadow.
Noticing the direction of her eyes, Madame Irina said, “Go, Monsieur Knightley. Leave ’er to me.”
Mr. Knightley smiled at Catherine and then did something that seemed a little unlike him. He winked. “I’ll see you very soon, Catherine,” he said softly.
He turned and walked briskly down the steps and into the carriage. Just before they moved off, he passed something to Mrs. Lewis. Only when her mother pushed it quickly down the front of her dress did Catherine understand what it was.
Money.
She watched the carriage go, hoping that her mother would look back through the small window. She never did.
The smile left the painted lips of Madame Irina as soon as the carriage was out of sight.
“Alors,” she said, picking up Catherine’s suitcase and walking through the front door.
There was a butler in the dark hall — a crumbly old retainer who smelled of yesterday’s food.
Madame Irina passed him the suitcase.
“The usual,” she said.
The words were spoken quietly, but Catherine heard them clearly enough to tell that the accent was as English as any that could be heard in the street outside.
“So, Catherine.” Madame Irina turned back. “Let me find one of ze gairls to show you where you will be sleeping.”
That day was the end of Catherine’s old life, but the lessons she had already learned stood her in good stead.
Don’t ask questions.
Never let your guard down.
Keep smiling.
Soon she learned the way things went at her new home. The girls danced and did exercises from early in the morning until late afternoon. Teaching them, Madame Irina would scream her orders, prodding and slapping them with the cane she called le Maître, the master. She only became slightly calmer when one of the girls hurt herself, with a torn muscle, bleeding feet, or a bruise caused by a crashing fall. Looking down at a girl who was sobbing in pain on the floor, Madame Irina would smile and seem almost happy for a moment.
“It hurts to be a grande ballerina, doesn’t it?” she would murmur quietly.
When their aching bodies needed rest, the girls would learn French from Monsieur
Henri, a neatly dressed man in his twenties who rarely smiled but would mock the girls’ accents.
“Quoi? Pardon?” he would shout, his face so close to theirs that they could smell the sickly scent of the pomade on his hair. “Je n’y comprends rien!”
The girls ate once a day, and there was never much to the meal that they were given. Sometimes it was a watery soup with a slice of bread, now and then some boiled fish. Hunger became part of their lives. A great dancer must be maigre — thin — Madame Irina would tell them.
Although she spoke to them and to any visitors in a strangled French accent, Madame Irina was no more French than they were, Catherine discovered. There was a rumor among the girls that she had once been a dancer, that when she was young she had caught the eye of a rich Frenchman and had run away to France with him. Now, it was said, all that remained of that life was a memory of how to speak French. After dark in the dormitories, the girls would joke about Madame, but in the hours of daylight, their teacher’s double life was never mentioned.
She had the power, each of them knew, to change their lives, one way or another. If a girl fell out of favor with Madame, she would soon disappear from the school, never to be heard of again. Sometimes a girl had answered back. Or, in spite of the meals, one might have put on weight. One girl was sent away because she had a birthmark on her neck.
“My girls must be parfait,” Madame Irina would say.
Petits rats, she called them. Catherine had at first thought it odd that children doing something as beautiful as dancing should be described as little rats, but soon, like the other girls, she took the name for granted. She was a petit rat and that was all there was to it.
Most of the pupils at the Blavitsky School of Dance were older than Catherine. Sometimes, when there were no adults around, they would talk of the homes they had left. Among the girls who had been there for some time, there was a sort of hopelessness in these conversations — they seemed to Catherine like someone starving who dreamed of food. Pupils who were serious about becoming dancers, she discovered, were not expected to return home, even at Christmas.
“Chez vous? Ça n’existe plus!” Madame said in class on her first day. “Votre maison est la danse. C’est tout!”
The Twyning Page 9
