A Circus of Brass and Bone

by Abra SW

  She set the plate on his knees. “Hold it there for a bit,” she said. “It’ll help warm you up. Don’t eat too fast or you’ll be sick. I will not have somebody being sick on my second-best shawl.”

  “No, ma’am,” Christopher managed. His brain began to thaw. At first he’d thought she wasn’t old enough to call him ‘young man’, but now she sounded just like his grandmother.

  A huge black man approached the fire. Swirling tattoos covered his skin and writhed over bulging muscles. The way he frowned made Christopher particularly notice those muscles. “Who’s this?” he asked.

  Christopher spooned up the pork and beans, chewed conscientiously, and swallowed. He felt the hot, savory beans warming him all the way down to his toes. He closed his eyes for a moment in sheer happiness.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out, Bradley,” Ginger said, mildly. “If I wasn’t being constantly interrupted, I’d already know.” He faced Christopher. “Who are you, where did you come from, and why did you need to run away?”

  Christopher spilled the metaphorical beans in hopes of being allowed to eat the real ones in peace. He explained his trade, and how he came to be in Seppanen Town, how he’d fallen asleep in Mrs. Della Rocca’s boarding house and woken up in chains, and how he’d escaped.

  When he’d finished, he shoveled in more pork and beans as they digested the news.

  “They’ll be suspicious unless they find him again,” the veiled lady, Mrs. Wershow, said thoughtfully. “It could be dangerous for us.”

  Christopher looked up, startled. He would have felt betrayed if his standards for betrayal weren’t quite high after his recent experiences. She’d seemed so kind.

  “We are not turning anyone over to slave-catchers!” the strongman rumbled. The gathering dark seemed to swell his size.

  Ginger and Mrs. Wershow exchanged a look. Or Christopher thought they did. It was hard to tell, what with the veil.

  Other circusfolk drifted closer, curious about what was going on—or hungry for pork and beans. Maybe a little of both. The beans are good enough to draw a crowd. Christopher’s spoon scraped the bottom of his bowl.

  “It’s a pleasure to see someone properly enjoy my food,” the cook said deliberately, ladling out another scoop that Christopher hadn’t been presumptuous enough to ask for, “but what will he do? With things the way they’re going, can we afford to feed an extra roustabout?”

  “Well,” Ginger said slowly, “we do need a ringmaster.”

  The others stared at him as if he were insane. Christopher was inclined to agree.

  “He’s a total rube!” a midget protested. “And you want him to be ringmaster?”

  “You all thought that I should be ringmaster, after that performance in Boston!”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So I declined the honor. Firmly. But I can teach him to be a ringmaster. At least, I can teach him to be a really good clown, and if you’re a really good clown, you can be the ringmaster if you need to.”

  “A clown?” Christopher asked faintly. Despite the warm plate of beans in his hands, this whole scene was taking on the surreal aspect of a dream. Please don’t let me wake up and find myself in that damned shed.

  “He doesn’t know anything about being … a clown,” Mrs. Wershow said.

  “Average height, hair that some will call brown and others blond, a nice, friendly, open face—he’s perfect.”

  “He don’t look funny to me!” the midget complained.

  “None of this is funny,” Christopher muttered. Peculiar, yes.

  Ginger spun to face him. “You don’t think this is funny? Laugh anyway. Laugh like your life depended on it!”

  Christopher stared, his stomach tightening, the beans suddenly sitting uneasily. Ginger didn’t seem to be joking.

  The notion that his life depended on a laugh was worth an uneasy chuckle, the kind a man gives when he’s not sure if there’s a joke or not.

  The midget made a disgusted sound. “Call that a laugh?”

  Christopher’s bowels tightened in instinctive anticipation of bad things. The beans suddenly seemed like a terrible idea.

  In the firelight, Ginger’s face became a thing of sharp edges and shadows.

  Christopher forced a chuckle, a harsh and crackling thing that the midget winced away from.

  “Look—” Christopher leaned forward to plead his case, but he was interrupted by a traitor within.

  A long, sonorous fart rolled out. The combination of beans, nervous bowels, and a sudden shift in position was too much.

  Ginger’s face twitched oddly. The midget’s eyes bulged. Silence hung in the redolent air.

  And suddenly, it was funny.

  Christopher burst out laughing. He had to set his plate of beans to the side because his body was shaking so much he would have spilled it otherwise. It felt like he hadn’t laughed in weeks, and maybe he hadn’t. He laughed at Ginger’s sudden silence and the midget’s bulging eyes. He laughed at his own rebellious bodily gasses. He’d escaped; why shouldn’t they? He laughed at himself for running away to join the circus. He laughed at the idea of his life depending on a laugh.

  He laughed until he cried, and then he laughed some more.

  And somewhere in there, they started laughing too.

  “Oh, you’ll do!” Ginger said. “You’ll do just fine.”

  The black strongman frowned. “They’ll send dogs after him.”

  Ginger looked at the crowd. “We’ve all been on the road a while. I’ve always liked taking care of dirty laundry in the moonlight.” He paused. “I suppose the horses should all be walked down to the stream and watered. After that—it’s a lovely night to take the lion for a walk.”

  A swarthy man with furrowed claw marks scarring his forearms grinned. “Those dogs won’t know what they smelled, but they’ll sure react to it! They won’t care about a boring old human when there’s lion scent around.”

  “Good,” the strongman said. He gave Christopher a nod and a gap-toothed smile. “They’re mostly good people here. You don’t need to be afraid.” With that reassurance, matters were apparently settled to his satisfaction. He lifted a tin plate of beans and headed off into the shadows.

  “I—thank you,” Christopher managed, looking around him. “Thank you so much.”

  The cook smiled. “Finish your beans.”

  Ginger answered more seriously. “You’ll have to work to earn this. Being a clown is more difficult than it looks from the outside.”

  “I will!”

  “Then the first thing to learn is Rule Number 1: Know when to disappear.”

  Christopher didn’t answer because his mouth was full, but he cocked his head. What does that have to do with being a clown?

  “When you want to surprise your audience, you’d better make sure they don’t see you,” Ginger explained. “Tonight, that means hiding. Rule Number 2 is always know how your audience will react. You ran away right when strangers came to town? If the hunters don’t find you right away, they’ll come here for sure.”

  Ginger raised his voice, addressing the dispersing crowd. “Put the word out that anybody who says anything to the townies about our newest member will answer to me. The kid might be wet behind the ears, but he’s one of ours now. Don’t even gossip about him to each other until we’re out of here.”

  “Where should I hide?” Christopher asked, still bewildered.

  Ginger smiled. “This isn’t the first time we’ve needed to hide somebody. The old ringmaster set up something special. Now, most of the circusfolk don’t need to know about this. Some of the animal handlers know, and the fortune teller—that’s Mrs. Wershow—and I. Bradley—the strongman—knows because he once had to hide in there for a week.”

  “A week?”

  “We’ll just hide you tonight. You’re a lot less noticeable than Bradley. Also, about half his size. He managed it, so you’ll be just fine. Follow me.” Ginger walked in the direction of the animal cages, extinguishi
ng his lantern as he went. The only light was from the sliver of a moon rising above the trees. Over his shoulder, Ginger said, “Tomorrow, I have other plans for you.”

  “I’ve got a plan of my own! I need to go back and rescue my friend.”

  “A woman?” Ginger asked, with a sigh.

  “No—just a fellow captive. He helped me out a lot when I started in the fields. I owe him.”

  Ginger paused to let the hostlers lead the horses past, down to the river. “But he didn’t escape with you.”

  “He didn’t believe it was safe. And he didn’t want to get the woman watching us in trouble.”

  “You don’t say. Well, tomorrow’s soon enough to discuss such things. Tonight, it’s time to hide.” Ginger stopped beside the ostrich wagon. The giant birds inside shifted, their feathers rustling as they settled down for the night. Ginger pulled aside the canvas protecting the wagon’s carved wooden side panel and its gilt and mirror adornments. “What was it again?” he muttered to himself. “Oh, yes.”

  He pushed down on two mirrored spots simultaneously, reached up and turned a carved piece at the very top of the wagon, and then hooked his finger into a hip-high crevice and pulled.

  The side panel of the wagon came away. A heavy cloth hung behind it. Ginger swept the cloth to the side, revealing a dark space about three feet deep and as wide as the wagon.

  “There’s a blanket in there, some hardtack if you get hungry again—sorry about the quality of the food, but this place doesn’t get used too much and it has to stay stocked—and two jugs. One jug is for drinking water, and one jug is,” Ginger coughed, “empty until you make it not. Don’t get the two mixed up! There’s an oil lantern with matches. Don’t use it unless you have to. The cloth should block light from escaping, but there’s no sense in taking risks. Try to sleep. I’ll get you out tomorrow morning.”

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Christopher Janzen, the Great Doctor Panjandrum and His Amazing Panacea That Cures All Ills!

  Seppanen Town, Connecticut

  Dr. Janzen surveyed his wagon and considered his plans for the evening.

  He remembered the midget’s complaint about hearing “squishing and sawing” during the ringmaster’s autopsy, and so he blocked the gap under his door with his pillow and a half-full sack of feed grain he’d borrowed when the head hostler wasn’t looking. He hung one blanket in front of the door and another over his window. As he did so, he glanced outside. Other circus members headed to the campfire for dinner. He pushed aside the urge to join them. He was a bit hungry, but he worked best with an empty stomach. The hunger would vanish soon.

  He pulled on a stiff butcher’s apron. He unrolled the cloth holding his medical instruments. He laid them out on the bench. He lit all four of the oil lamps he owned. Only then did he unwrap the gift the Indian mahout had carried back for him after they were attacked: the body of one of the bandits. Dr. Janzen had wrapped it in canvas and stored it in his bunk until they were safely through Seppanen Town.

  Now he unwrapped the canvas, folding the edges up fastidiously to prevent any bodily fluids from escaping. The dead man glared up at him with one remaining eye. The equestrienne’s pistol shot had turned the other eye into a crusted red-black ruin. The bullet’s track passed through the eye and into the cranium. Once in, the lightweight bullet would have ricocheted inside the skull case, slashing through the brain until that organ was an uninformative hash.

  The cause of death was too obvious to interest Dr. Janzen, though he noted in passing that the gunpowder stippling around the wound implied that the equestrienne had shot from a very close distance indeed. What he wished to learn was the nature of the dead man’s life and the condition of his health. Knowing the effects of the aether storm on its survivors could be crucial scientific knowledge, but the uneducated rarely offered up their relatives’ bodies for dissection.

  “Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae,” he said before he began. This is the place where death delights to help the living.

  The gross examination of the corpse showed that the man had lost weight recently but maintained acceptable health. He was in good physical shape, though one of his arms was notably more muscular. He had probably not been a bandit long, since he still had callouses from handling farm tools and dirt under his fingernails. And his clothes were freshly laundered, implying the care of a female.

  Dr. Janzen felt the usual anticipation at the first cut of his scalpel. What might he learn?

  He made a Y-shaped incision from the shoulders to mid-chest and then straight down to the public bone. Carrying the incisions across allowed him to gently peel back flaps of flesh to reveal the ribcage and glistening organs.

  He followed the modern Virchow autopsy procedure, which dictated removing each organ individually, carefully examining it for abnormalities, and preserving what was necessary before proceeding. He felt pride that he followed techniques still taught in the premier medical schools of Berlin. Never mind that he wasn’t licensed and that his patient was quite dead. He would not let his standards slip. And the circus’ Museum of Educational Novelties provided a good source of formaldehyde for specimens.

  At some point, the sound of men talking loudly outside and the barking of dogs disturbed him. He pushed aside the blanket covering his window. Lanterns bobbed around the animal wagons. He listened, but he heard no shots, and none of the circus raised an alarm, so he kept working.

  The corpse’s over-muscled arm drew his attention. He cut a flap along the forearm and peeled the skin fascia back. He found the lesions he’d feared.

  Hoping to disprove his theory, he pulled out sections of muscle and ligament so he could study them more closely beside the lamp. Signs of sudden growth were apparent. The main veins were scaled by fresh scarring, and he noted blood extravasation. The blood leakage into surrounding tissues could have been caused by an allergic reaction or a burn, but there were no other indicators of such a thing. When Dr. Janzen flensed the arm down to the bone, he noted bone deformities, nodules of improper growth that would cause trauma to the area. The man must have been in great discomfort, though he couldn’t have known the cause.

  Dr. Janzen had only seen such symptoms during the War. He’d hoped never to see them again.

  Long after the corpse was once more bundled up in canvas, the implications kept Dr. Janzen from his rest. Dark thoughts spiraled like buzzards above the dying. Finally, he rose and measured out laudanum sufficient to let him sleep through to sunrise.

  Chapter 7

  ~* * *~

  A Stranger Comes To Town

  Christopher Knall

  Seppanen Town, Connecticut

  Christopher was hungry enough that the hardtack crackers were starting to look good. Morning light filtered through chinks in the wall. He heard people and animals moving around. But Ginger hadn’t come back yet.

  He pressed his mouth to a crack and hissed, “Hey, Ginger! Could somebody get—”

  The secret panel unlocked with a click. He pulled back barely in time to get out of the way before it opened. Ginger stood there, glowering.

  “Sorry,” Christopher said. “I—I thought you were going to let me out earlier. I thought you’d forgotten me or been caught.” He climbed out of the dark hidey-hole and stretched. The bright blue morning sky arched above him. A brisk autumn wind ruffled dark red maple leaves. The smoky smell of the cook’s fire wafted on the breeze to him. It all seemed new and precious.

  “Fugitives in hiding tend to come out for breakfast,” Ginger told him. “A smart hunter always checks back in the morning.”

  Christopher tensed. “They’re here?”

  Ginger shrugged. “They aren’t smart hunters. I didn’t think they would be.”

  “So you kept me locked up for nothing?”

  “Ah!” Ginger raised three fingers. “Rule Number 3: Never underestimate your audience. If they had come back, they wouldn’t have found you. Now you’re going back in your hiding place until I’m absolutely ce
rtain it’s safe. Be quiet in there. No calling my name.” He paused. “I’ll bring you a plate of eggs later.”

  “Sorry,” Christopher mumbled.

  “What are you planning to do today?”

  “I need to rescue my friend.”

  “And after that? Will you two hide until we’re out of town?”

  Christopher frowned. “I can’t just walk away, knowing that they’ll keep doing this to other people. That’s not right.”

  “Oh, I have a plan for that.” Ginger smiled a smile with sharper edges than Christopher would expect from such a mild-mannered man.

  “What plan?”

  “Can you shoot? —Well, never mind, I have explosive charges that will do the job. Rule Number 4: Keep extra explosives on hand. You never know when they’ll be useful.”

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Christopher Janzen, the Great Doctor Panjandrum and His Amazing Panacea That Cures All Ills!

  Seppanen Town, Connecticut

  Dr. Janzen found the other circus members to be strangely quiet over breakfast. He didn’t mind. When in his circus persona, The Great Doctor Panjandrum, he unreeled an amazing spiel. The rest of the time, Dr. Janzen enjoyed silence and the ability to observe but say nothing.

  This morning, he observed that several people’s appetites were diminished. The group lacked the conviviality typical of a rest day. Only Ginger the clown seemed unaffected.

  At least nobody complained about odd noises coming from his wagon the night before, Dr. Janzen thought. The pillow and feed sack must have provided adequate insulation. Or perhaps the circusfolk were distracted by the men who’d visited during the night.

  “Did everyone sleep well?” he asked. He certainly hadn’t, but what was their excuse? They remained in blessed ignorance.

  They stared at him as if an ostrich had talked.

  “Quite well, thank you!” Ginger said cheerily.

  “Excellent. Won’t a couple of days rest be welcome? Seeing new faces?”