OUR QUARTERMASTERS FIND SUPPLIES FOR PONCA RESETTLEMENT SUFFICIENT BUT WILL ATTEMPT TO AUGMENT IF POSSIBLE. YOU ARE ORDERED TO QUESTION YOUR MEN AS TO LIKELY THEFT OF SUPPLIES ALREADY RENDERED. YOUR REQUEST TO DELAY DEPARTURE UNTIL ARRIVAL OF ADDITIONAL FOODSTUFFS ETC IS DENIED. FRANTERNIZATION ORDER ALSO PRECLUDES ANY DISTRIBUTION OF TROOP FOODSTUFFS TO ENEMY COMBATANTS ON PAIN OF COURT MARTIAL.
COL. F. X. HIGGINS
The first order was harsh enough. It had caused him to question good men as if they were criminals; but the second was far more cruel. As the trip became harder, he had been forced to turn away women and children begging for a bit of his meat or rice. For the first time, he blessed the flasks of whiskey his men kept hidden in their gun cases or secreted in their pockets. Without it, he knew many of his troops would not have had the courage to ignore the sick and starving before their eyes.
But now, even if the soldiers had been allowed such charity, they would not have been able to give it; Miles had ordered his men to ride at least a quarter of a mile away and upwind from the Ponca.
“It’s the smallpox,” he told the troops, “and it does not discriminate. It will kill a white man as soon as an Indian and if we get what we deserve, sooner. All personnel are ordered to wear their bandanas over their noses and mouths—no exceptions. Because believe me, gentlemen, when you see the death the pox brings with it, you will take the revolver before you become its victim.”
Prairie Flower was now a witness to that death.
Over a week’s time, she had watched as Voice Like A Drum sickened. It had begun with a simple cough, a guttural rattle deep in the chest. But soon the cough brought up black blood, and the old man began to hemorrhage from his eyes and nose. In the past few days, more and more blood had begun to pool beneath his skin until it turned his face and arms blue-black. She could almost feel the heat rise from him as he burned with fever. As she laid a cool rag across his cheek, she heard his murmured prayers and incantations. He spoke to the spirits of land and air, of earth and fire, even to the Wakanda itself.
She wanted to run, to hide. But, Standing Bear had made his wishes clear: no member of his family would falter—and he gave no permission to be exhausted or terrified. With the medicine man dying, the chief’s son, Bear Shield, was placed in charge of the tribe’s spiritual needs. He saw to it that the dead were buried with due ceremony; he said the warrior prayers and redistributed the rations. Prairie Flower was assigned to nursing duty and what Colonel Miles would have called the “maintenance of morale.” “You have a good smile,” Standing Bear had told her. “Your teeth are white and even and all where they should be. This will be a comfort to the dying.”
And so, she went about her duties with a constant grin. There were times this made her feel like an idiot; but then she would detect someone trying to smile back at her through a face filled with pustules and a throat constricted by bile.
But now, she wondered how long she could continue.
Earlier that day, she had gone to the river to wash blood from rags and bury diseased clothing. She had seen her reflection in the water and remembered the days when her brother would tease her for the roundness of her cheeks and breasts and the womanly strip of fat about her middle. These had disappeared, replaced by the kind of sharp-cut planes she had always envied in women like Little Feather gifted with “Indian bones.” The thin girl in the water seemed a stranger.
“My friend looks very bad.”
Prairie Flower turned from Voice Like A Drum to see Standing Bear framed in the tipi’s entry.
“He is close to death, Father. I have smiled at him all day, but it has not helped him. He bleeds from everywhere.”
Standing Bear leaned toward Voice Like A Drum. The shaman’s eyes were open. The whites were dark red.
“How much longer will he suffer like this?”
“This is hard to say, Father. He may remain like this another day or two days. This has been how it was with the others.”
The chief nodded, resting his fingers on the handle of his knife.
“Daughter, I wish you to take a short refreshment period. It is nearly midday and you have attended my friend through the night. Go to our tipi and sleep, and return when the sun has gone down.”
“But Father, Voice Like A Drum …
“I wish that you rest. Does this little walk through the wilderness change that a daughter should obey her father?”
Prairie Flower rose from the muddy ground. She gently placed her hand on Standing Bear’s shoulder and made for their tipi. Inside, she lay down on a pallet made filthy with travel. I will rest for a moment, she thought, only a moment.
When she awoke, the sun was low over the ridges. She jumped up, wrapped a shawl around herself, and ran through the village. When she reached the tent of Voice Like A Drum, she found her father still there and the medicine man motionless, peace across his face.
“He is dead, daughter. It happened in an instant. Such is the mercy for which we all might hope and in which we all must believe.”
Prairie Flower looked down at the old man. She had gotten used to his blood: seeing it new and fresh, caked and old. But she had never before seen the stain which now spread across his breast, forming a neat circle beneath his tunic. Silently, she turned to her father, her face a mixture of sympathy and accusation.
“We shall speak no more of this,” Standing Bear said. “I will call your brother to dress his body and I will speak over him. You will gather all well enough to honor him—and then we will return him to the earth.”
She nodded and left the tipi. She spoke to Bear Shield and informed all of the shaman’s family members. His wife and youngest son began to keen and wail at the news; his two daughters, one of whom had been born only the day before Prairie Flower, were too weak even to cry.
Night had fallen. In the distance, she could see the yellow fires of the soldiers, their white faces reflected in the light. The camp had fallen silent except for the wails of the dying. As she walked away from the tent in which Voice Like A Drum lay, she came upon young Wind Whistler and his new wife, Shadow Moon. As they greeted her, she remembered her father’s order to present a cheerful face. She raised her hand to the couple, grinning widely. The smile froze on her face and she fell to the ground.
22
PRINCESS NOOR-AL-HAYA STOOD IN THE WINGS OF THE Astor Place Opera House. She bit her knuckle as she watched Mr. John McTammany stride confidently across the stage.
If only she were so sure of herself.
But then, she was only a woman; what McTammany was about to present to the audience was a miracle.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you,” said McTammany in his Scots burr. “I am fair grateful to you for coming to see my invention. I believe that part of your interest is that, alone among all such inventions, my instrument derives its beautiful tones from a mere roll of paper, such as you might find at your butcher’s.”
McTammany unrolled a continuous sheet of plain white bond and threw the end of it into the audience. The ladies in the front row tittered as it landed in their laps.
“But unlike the paper of that noble man, observe! My roll is shot through with these tiny oblong holes. Each roll represents a single song painstakingly encoded within these perforations.”
McTammany reached toward a black lacquered box that sat atop a grand piano. He slid open a double door in the box to reveal one of the rolls already inside. Producing a large brass crank with an oak handle, he inserted it into the piano’s side and gave it several quick revolutions. Then he let the crank loose.
The mechanism whirred for a moment and the first notes of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Number 14—the Moonlight—began to fill the auditorium. The audience burst into cheers and applause, amazed by the piano’s seeming ability to play itself.
Princess Noor frowned. She and her partner were on next, and she wondered how much enthusiasm the crowd would have left. Being careful to not disturb her meticulously dressed hair, she pulled the col
lar of her robe close around her neck. Shivering, she walked to Alexander’s dressing room and leaned against the door.
“That Scotchman and his piano are really tickling the audience.”
Alexander said nothing. He had dipped his fingers into a small tin of black wax and was busily applying it to his mustache.
“I’m scared enough,” she said. “The last thing I need is for some Scotchman with a shiny gadget to make us look like pikers.”
Alexander twisted the wax through the tip of his beard and buried his fingers in a jar of cold cream. He wiped the cream and the blackness from his hands with a small towel.
“I understand your anxiety, my love,” he said. “This is, after all, your debut. But please remember that you are now the protégé of the Great Herrmann. In all the years I’ve been performing, there has never been an act I was afraid to follow and there’s never been one with the courage to follow me. And now, with the addition of your royal self, I daresay we’ll be lucky to find anyone in the show business who’ll have the courage to appear with us at all, let alone precede us onstage.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Alex. You’ve done this a thousand times. But now you’re adding something new, and I’m it. Lady-Jane may be a tough bitch, but I don’t mind telling you Princess Noor is fit to swoon. What if my appearance is unwelcome? What if my costumes are too much for these rubes?”
Alexander rose from his chair and put his arms around her. Then he untied her robe and let it fall to the floor.
She was a vision from the Old Testament or perhaps the Arabian Nights. Her dark shoulders and arms were bare to the elbow, her forearms encased in blue transparent silk, onyx bracelets at her wrists. Circling her throat was a silver and gold choker and a dozen delicate necklaces in a hundred colors. A bodice of blue and gold brocade decorated each breast with the wing of a dove; from this, jeweled fringes reached nearly to her waist, barely touching a wide blue belt jingling with rows of Turkish coins. The ensemble concluded with pantaloons of the sheerest silk, gathered at the ankle and set in gold cuffs. Her feet were bare.
“You are too much for me,” Alexander said. “The sight of you inflames me to the point that all I worry about is the patrons noticing my … excitement. I fully expect you will have a similar effect upon the gentlemen in the house. Yes, your artistry will raise eyebrows, especially amongst the more proper old dragons. Good. May they enjoy their apoplexy while you educate them about the culture of your homeland.”
“My homeland? That’s a laugh. Most of my homeland is right now being shit on by some settler’s goat.”
Alexander held up his hand. “No, your homeland is the place of sands and pyramids, of Isis and Osiris. Let’s not forget the name of the game, shall we?”
A man with a dirty collar and a derby hat knocked on the door.
“Two minutes, Professor.”
Alexander let the princess go. “Of one thing I am certain. You shall cause a sensation of one kind or another but a sensation nonetheless. Don’t forget your cue music. You dance into the light when the cymbal crashes. Not before.” He kissed her and then hurried from the dressing room and through the backstage corridors.
As he took the stage, Princess Noor could hear the near-deafening applause. For what seemed an eternity, Alexander presented his usual litany of tricks: the Artist’s Dream; the Cocoon Dance; the Coin from a Biscuit.
These old standbys completed, Alex walked to the edge of the footlights.
“Thank you so very much for your generosity, ladies and gentlemen. Every year I perform throughout the civilized world. But I believe in all sincerity that the New York audience is truly second to none!”
Like trained seals, the crowd clapped and stamped their feet.
“And because you are such a fine audience, I would now like to introduce a personage special and unique: a figure from the mysterious east, born in the very shadow of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Although she may appear as a quite ordinary—albeit exceedingly beautiful—girl, she has in fact, seen and heard things that no woman in history can claim. Once the daughter of a king, she was a poor slave when your humble servant found and rescued her. Now, I bring her to you in all her exotic beauty—this ruler of the Nile, this Empress of Invisibility! Ladies and gentlemen, look at Noor! The Princess-Al-Haya!”
A flash of fire and smoke filled the proscenium. Cymbals crashed like waves on a shore. At first, the shape at the corner of the stage looked like a small tornado of blackened dust: but with its emergence into the light it became a dervish of lighted spots and silken veils. As it grew nearer to center stage, the audience could now see the perfect figure of a woman within a whirling cloth. In another explosion of sparks and flame, she crossed her hands above her head, her fingers striking brass castanets, and bowed nearly to the floor.
Then she began to dance.
She moved like a cobra being charmed; her shoulders shook, her belly rolled, and her feet arched nearly double. She slithered across the floor and somersaulted from apron to footlight. As her music proceeded, the orchestra increased its percussion, her hips swaying on every beat. From the center of her body, a tiny point of light glinted with scarlet fire. Finally, she sprang up—and with a playful pull, unknotted the tie of the great magician.
“Jezebel!”
Up until that moment, Mrs. Lucy Ware Hayes had been too dumbfounded to breathe, let alone speak. But as the fingers of Princess Noor-Al-Haya deftly loosened the black cravat, she found her voice.
“Harlot!”
Now, other women in the audience began to rise from their seats and join her in a chorus of incensed morality, emboldened by the outrage of the First Lady of the United States.
From the New York World
Late City Edition
March 12, 1879
MAGIC SHOW SCANDALIZES
AUDIENCE, FIRST LADY!
“GREAT HERRMANN” BRINGS FEMALE ASSISTANT TO
STAGE OF ASTOR PLACE OPERA HOUSE, SHOCKS MRS. HAYES
Women in Audience Leave in Droves—
Find Costumes “Obscene”
POLICE CALLED TO QUELL NEAR-RIOT!
Mrs. Hayes Calls Performance of “Princess Noor” Disgusting
The Astor Place Opera House, normally a bastion of societal propriety and decorum, was the scene of a near-riot last night as the Great Herrmann, arguably the most famous and innovative magician of this age, presented his new program to the public.
According to witnesses, the row begin about fifteen minutes into the presentation, when Professor Herrmann introduced what the police are calling the first female magic assistant ever seen in New York or, apparently, the country.
The attractive young woman, who goes by the name “Princess Noor-Al-Haya,” appeared dressed in costumes that many members of the audience deemed far too provocative for public viewing. According to Chief Constable H. B. Qualen of the Sixth Police District, the lady arrived onstage doing the sort of spinning dance associated with the women of the mysterious East.
“What we were told was, the female came out whirling like a dervish,” the Constable said. “She was attired not in a gown or even a dress, but trousers of the type a man would wear: sort of sheer pantaloons with a vest, and her shoulders were bare to the world.”
But the element that seemed to contribute most to the fracas was a small area of exposed brown skin between these “pantaloons” and a fringed, jewel-encrusted bodice. Many in the audience began to jeer when they realized that the red object glistening on the princess’s stomach was a ruby that had apparently been inserted into her navel.
“It was simply disgusting,” said Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, wife of the president, there for the first night’s performance. “Never could I have imagined such a flagrant display of public nudity. There were children in the audience! I cannot see why such a brilliant artiste as Professor Herrmann should deem such filth necessary to his continued success.”
Only a few minutes into the princess’s appearance, many of the ladies,
including Mrs. Hayes, began leaving the theatre, which necessitated the accompanying exit of their husbands. Some shouted “shame” at the dusky performer, and one woman reportedly threw a fox fur coat onto the stage exhorting the girl to “cover yourself.” A Mrs. P. Stanley Stratton of Tuxedo Park fainted and had to be revived by her coachman.
Not everyone, however, was so offended. Many of the denizens of the third gallery, mostly men, could be heard whooping and applauding when the princess appeared. Police took several drunkards to jail.
The World has learned that a discussion was then held between Professor Herrmann and Constable Qualen. Once order was restored, the show was allowed to continue. Those who remained mostly praised the performance of the swarthy beauty.
“It was amazing,” said Mr. Daniel P. Sorrell of New Rochelle, a druggist. “She danced beautifully. She really seemed to disappear at times, and I thought her costumes were fetching.”
According to the show’s program, Princess Noor, as she was often referred to from the stage, is the daughter of the three hundredth Grand Caliph of Egypt. Several years ago, whilst studying the principles of invisibility with the Grand Vizier of Bur Safajah, she was kidnapped by the Sultan of Oman, and held as a member of his harem, which includes over one thousand wives. Professor Herrmann, in Oman to study with one of that country’s mystic seers, rescued her from this terrible fate by a feat of champion swordsmanship against great odds. The famed mountebank offered to return her to her father in Egypt, but the girl, with the Caliph’s permission and accompanied by the royal chaperone, opted to remain with the Great Herrmann in gratitude for her dramatic liberation. Thus, she has become the first female assistant to a stage magician.
“There is absolutely nothing off-color about Her Highness or my act,” Professor Herrmann said in a statement to the press. “The princess simply appears in the beautiful and colorful costumes of her native land. Does her raiment contain somewhat less material than those of her sisters here? Undoubtedly. And does the combination of her exotic clothing and exquisite face and figure have the potential to shall we say, quicken the pulse? For any man with blood in his veins, yes! But all planet Earth knows that Herrmann is a name long associated only with wholesome family entertainment. In this spirit, we present our program not only as the finest magic show in all the world, but as an educational experience exposing … if that is the word … the wonders of that world. Princess Noor-Al-Haya is, I believe, one of those wonders.”
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