The Ladies of the Secret Circus Page 12

  “This is not your concern, Cecile.”

  “Father!” I put myself between the man and Father’s gaze, hoping it would break whatever magic was flowing from Father.

  Father sighed wearily and stared up at the chandelier above us, his voice bored. “Curio. Would you like to be the entrée at tonight’s Dinner of the Daemons?” Father leaned over and held his hand out. “Now.”

  Reluctantly, Curio spit something red and raw into Father’s outstretched gloved palm. To my horror, I realized that Curio had severed his own tongue. Foamy drool and blood ran down the man’s feverish face and drizzled over his gray chin stubble.

  “Oh no!” Immediately, I scrambled, peeling off my sweater to wipe at the little man’s face. With a fury, I turned to Father, the anger coursing inside me. “How could you do this? How?” My voice was now a shriek, and I could see heads poke up from chairs to see what the fuss was about.

  Ignoring me, Father put his face close to Curio’s. “You must find a way to dig deeper toward Styx using the magic you have. Let this be a lesson to you. It will be your arms next.” Father opened the window and tossed Curio’s tongue into the garden, where a pair of crows immediately seized upon it with a loud racket.

  “Cecile,” said Father. “You must not interrupt me when I’m doing business.”

  “This man is in pain!” As I spat the words out, I could see a smile form on Father’s face, which only infuriated me more. He was so much like Esmé that I could feel my hands shaking. I patted at Curio, whose eyes were now bulging as he choked on his own blood. Attempting to sit him up, I was surprised when the man violently pushed me away, sending me tumbling across the floor. By then Doro and the Crimson Sisters had surrounded him, the entire hallway a mad rush of activity. Curio grunted and squealed something to Doro in a strange language that the fellow mute clown seemed to understand innately.

  “Cecile,” said Father. “Come.” He stepped over Curio’s quaking torso toward the door that led to the Great Maze.

  “No,” I said, my voice deepening so much that he regarded me curiously.

  Doro’s eyes met mine. The Crimson Sister with the single pyramid hedge of hair placed her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll take him back to his room. It’s not safe for him with you here,” she whispered.

  My eyes moved from Doro to the sister and back to Curio, who all stared back at me with dread. I wasn’t wanted here. Composing myself, I stood and followed Father through the doors and into the gardens.

  “What was so important that you came charging out to find me?” The sun was shining high as it always did in the maze, our gardens never requiring rain. As though nothing had happened, Father calmly placed his sunglasses on and tapped his cane, his long black duster coat far too heavy for such a warm walk. Pausing, he noticed something on his ruffled collar and picked at it, annoyed. It was blood. “Curio,” he spat before starting toward the Great Maze.

  I followed behind him with heavy footsteps. “What on earth did Curio do to deserve that? You cut out his tongue like a barbarian.”

  He spun in the narrow aisle between the hedgerows to face me. “I assure you, Curio ate his own tongue.”

  “Hardly,” I snorted. From my position at the entrance to the maze, I could see Curio’s shiny patent shoes still trembling.

  “Cecile.” Father tapped his cane. “Get on with it.”

  Swallowing hard, I found fury at every word he spoke. This creature had stolen my memories, my childhood. Thanks to him, I was a ship with no compass. As I watched Doro lift Curio to his feet, I became enraged. They’d both lost their voices at Father’s hand. My fists tightened and I didn’t mince words. “I understand that you felt I wasn’t strong enough to remember my own childhood.”

  By habit, Father’s cane tapped impatiently, but when it stopped abruptly, I knew that I’d made a grave miscalculation. I wanted to pull my words back immediately, but it was too late. So quiet was he that, somewhere in a distance, I could hear a single croquet ball connecting with another; laughter ensued, followed by the sound of a porcelain teacup returning to its saucer.

  “Who told you that?” I could see the features that he tried to hide slide through his mask.

  “No one,” I said defiantly. Yet as I spoke, I wondered what it would feel like if he made me bite my own tongue off right now for talking to him so harshly. Would he do that to his own daughter? With his handsome visage and witty humor, I find he is often underestimated, but I know better.

  “Of course, someone told you these things, Cecile.” The calm lilt of his voice was disarming.

  “Is it true?” Taking a deep breath, I fumbled with the piping on my skirt, trying to refocus the conversation.

  He faced me, and the corner of his lip turned up. Father is a vain creature, having perfected his mortal look—handsome, ageless—yet small traces of his true essence peek through, the white tuft of chin hair, the hint of dished ears. His soft curls nearly touch his collar, and his amber eyes are wide and child-like but have a hint of his horizontal pupils. When he was weary or, in this case, livid, his mortal “coat” often slid off. “Was it Plutard?” He spat her name.

  “No,” I said, recoiling in fear for our costumer.

  “Sylvie, then?”

  “God, no.” But the mention of her name was confirmation that, as I had suspected, she knew more than she let on.

  “Then it was your sister.” His voice was less urgent now, so sure that he had identified his culprit. Now he could cut out the rot and restore order in his circus.

  Even though she has taunted and humiliated me, I suddenly feared for Esmé. This had been a terrible, terrible mistake. I had been angry at Esmé for years of gibes and innuendos. Like a child, I’d wanted Father to intervene, to make her stop. In a way, I wanted a little revenge on her. The idea of him doling out a fitting punishment to her—like no outside trips for a few weeks—felt justified to me. Just the thought of her watching Sylvie and myself leave through the door was strangely satisfying, but from the pulsing vein on his temple, I had been a wicked fool. Despite the fact that she was his daughter, I sensed her punishment would be severe. I had not figured on this.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I tried to match his calmness, measure for measure, allowing him to think the information she’d given me was trivial and that I was not affected by it.

  “But it does, my dear. It most certainly does matter. She knows better.”

  This was a curious thing for him to say. While I have thought my sister cruel for her hints, it had never occurred to me that she was not permitted to tell me about our own shared childhood. What happened to me to cause this secrecy?

  April 7, 1925

  Esmé disappeared this morning.

  Her bedroom door was ajar, her beloved perfume bottles shattered, the bedcovers pulled violently from the mattress, and the slipper chair overturned. At the doorframe, I spied marks where her nails had dug into the wood in an attempt to fight off whatever had taken her. Next I ran from room to room, alerting everyone to what I’d found. Frantically, I searched the dressing room, the mazes, the horse stalls. Nothing. The realization came to me that I was the only person hunting for her. The other performers lowered their heads in affirmation that they already knew she was gone. Charging down the hall, I pounded furiously at Madame Plutard’s oddly locked door, but she refused to let me in.

  It was as though the entire circus had shuttered up tight and left me outside.

  April 10, 1925

  After three days with no word of Esmé, I was almost feverish. I’d scratched my arms raw from worry until they bled. Father had gone again and refused my requests to be summoned back. Finally, I tried one more attempt at Madame Plutard’s room, banging on the door wildly until she finally opened it. “Yes?” Her tone was cold, distant.

  “When will she be coming back?” I realized that I hadn’t bathed in days and my hair was matted.

  “She may never be coming back, you little fool.” The older woman’s face registere
d such a look of disgust that I almost didn’t recognize her. “Your mother would have been so disappointed in you.” With that, she shut the door in my face.

  And at that moment I knew that she was correct. With a mixture of fury and stupidity, I’d likely led my sister to her death. Esmé had been right all along. I was nothing.

  This evening, just hours before Saturday’s performance, I smelled them before I saw them. Minotaurs. A swirling stench of filthy fur and rot wafted down the Grand Promenade even before they materialized. Two beasts each held one of an unconscious Esmé’s arms around their necks, her feet dragging behind her. Tailing the minotaurs were two enormous, growling hellhounds, giant inky curs with coats so shiny they resembled glass figurines. Nipping at the air around them, the beasts snarled at nothing and then began clawing at each other until the head minotaur grabbed one by the scruff of the neck to settle the animal.

  In the hallway, I stood speechless. Their entire entrance was designed to be pure spectacle. They could have easily carried her back without the added histrionics, but the show was for the rest of us and it was pure Father. That he was away was also no accident. As the duo turned a sharp corner with Esmé’s limp body, her leg snapped against the wall, nearly breaking as the hounds bit at her bare feet. Esmé, drooling with her head resting on her chest, never stirred.

  I put my hand to my mouth in horror. Never had I imagined that this would be Esmé’s fate.

  Following behind them was Madame Plutard like a priest trailing an executioner. From outside her room, you could hear Esmé’s body hitting the bed with force. Then the door opened and shut again. Hoofbeats pounded back down the hall as the lot headed to their next assignment. Our costumer entered my sister’s room and shut the door.

  Quietly, I crept down the hall and put my ear to the wall. I could only make out the sound of Madame Plutard sobbing.

  April 15, 1925

  Her door remained shut for several days.

  I had time to contemplate my actions.

  I wasn’t alone in my hatred. Since Esmé’s disappearance, the performers nearly fled when they saw me coming or when I attempted to sit next to them—a silent allegiance to her that I understood. It was yesterday—the fourth day—before Doro allowed me to sit next to him.

  “I know I did a terrible thing,” I admitted to Doro.

  He placed his hand over mine. Whatever path had led him here, Doro was always kind to me. There were rumors he’d once been an opera singer who was quite the lothario in life, leaving a string of broken hearts throughout Paris and Rome. This version of Hell, our circus, had re-created him as a mute clown. Father’s punishments stung. In Father’s version of Hell, a great beauty in life was reimagined as a monstrosity. If his story is true, Doro, once a vain and proud tenor, would never hear the sound of his voice again. Doro’s white face paint and red smile are like a permanent mask. Often I’ve wondered what he looked like in his life, but the performers here were always in costume now as though they were dolls that could be removed from a shelf.

  Doro did, in fact, have a doll. It was a miniature Doro that never left his side. The two were exact replicas—and I can’t say that I knew which version was the original. Our circus was dizzying that way. Perched on his lap, the miniature Doro puppet seemed to wake from his sleep to speak.

  “You didn’t know,” said Doro’s puppet. He said these words carefully, like he was giving me the benefit of the doubt.

  I hung my head. I had hoped that Esmé would be punished. I just didn’t expect it to be this extreme. “What happened to her?”

  Doro’s puppet sighed. “She was taken to the White Forest.”

  “How bad is that?” There were always threats of banishment to the White Forest, but I’d never seen one carried out.

  “It is the worst possible fate, Cecile.” Doro the clown looked down. The puppet continued, his voice smooth and bright like he was speaking from somewhere far away. “She may never recover. Many people do not.” At this, Doro the clown began to cry. “Your father sent us there once.” I realized it was there that his tongue had been cut out.

  “My father sent you there?”

  The puppet bobbed his head.

  Squeezing the big clown’s hand, I did not blame the other performers for hating me.

  I hated me.

  April 16, 1925

  Yesterday I tried to see her, but Madame Plutard refused to let me through the door. “She has nothing to say to you.” From Madame Plutard’s manner, I could tell that she preferred not to talk to me, either.

  To witness the scorn on their faces is almost unbearable. I took to my room, not bothering with the fireplace, wanting to feel the discomfort and pain that I deserved. A dampness set in, causing my bones to ache, particularly my leg. After a few hours, Sylvie came and brought me soup. I knew that she had to smuggle it because no one sought to feed me right now. As she handed me the bowl, she glanced over her shoulder and I knew that she didn’t wish to be seen with me. I took the soup and despised myself for needing to eat it. I’d considered wasting away here, but I found that I could not do it. I closed my eyes as the spoon touched my mouth and the broth warmed me.

  There was a show that evening. Even without Esmé, it went on. My role in the circus was to help the performers get into their different costumes. I stood at the side door, holding props for the performers while they shot me looks of contempt or, as usual, ignored me.

  After the Wheel of Death, I rotated the bull’s-eye back to its original spot. I thought that I could stand on the bull’s-eye while Louis threw knives. As I filled the water for the horses, I wondered what it would be like to stand astride them, like Sylvie.

  In the past, I’d tried to learn to ride, but Father has not permitted it for fear that I get hurt. Even Esmé was not permitted to ride the horses, a rare refusal from him.

  So this morning, I walked out to the trapeze ladder for the first time. I don’t know what possessed me to do this, but I believe it was the soup. Sylvie’s small act of kindness exposed my desire to live, but I won’t exist without undergoing a metamorphosis. The old Cecile, the one who tattled on her sister and lived as a shadow, is gone. No longer will I be the object of scorn or pity. I may not know what happened before the pink cake, but I can control what happens now. Weak from lack of eating, I forced myself on as I started up the ladder. A hush fell over the rehearsal. A few snickers and a “What does she think she’s doing?” erupted from the floor below me. Because it moved, the ladder was more difficult to climb than I’d anticipated, but I wasn’t giving anyone the satisfaction of saying that I couldn’t cut it. If I plunged to my death here, it would be an honorable death, so I kept climbing. It was true that I was the weak twin, but I was also light, like a ballerina, which would be to my advantage on the trapeze. When I finally reached the top, I looked down. My knees nearly buckled from fright, but I held the bar in my palms for the first time, determined to change my fate.

  It was morning practice, the one no one paid attention to, and half the performers barely showed up for it, but I looked down and all eyes were on me: Arms were on hips, hands over mouths, and Doro was motioning for me to come down. I’d never held the bar before, but I’d longed to feel it in my hands. It was heavier, thicker, and smoother than I’d imagined. From the other side of the trapeze, Hugo, the catcher, tried to shoo me down. I shook my head. “Let me try.”

  Hugo did not seem thrilled to have me on his trapeze. I didn’t blame him, but I wasn’t budging. I held on to the bar, pulling it toward me defiantly. Reluctantly, he shouted for me to keep my thumbs tucked under. If I was going over, he appeared to be trying to make it not cost him a limb. I nodded at his direction. With his finger, he drew a net that appeared below us. As it materialized, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  There are no words to describe the first time that I swung. It isn’t even the swing, it’s the decision to step off and let go. I recalled my sister’s limp body being dragged through the hall as I jumped, and I left the o
ld me on the platform. Hugo sat on the opposite side, not moving and not trying to catch me.

  I fell that first time.

  I could hear rumblings around the circus and a few laughs and an “I knew it” from somewhere. Hugo was taking a big risk. The aftereffects of Father’s wrath on Curio were still being felt. I crawled to the edge of the net and twisted myself down like I’d seen them do. I was awkward and got tangled in the net, but I walked right past the performers and up the ladder again. The second time at the top, I faced Hugo and nodded, ready to go again. He sent the bar over to me and I missed it, causing him to have to send it again and a roar of laughter from the performers below. My legs were shaking at the spectacle I was creating but also the fear. This time, I was prepared for the way the bar felt against my hands, and my weight was no longer a surprise. I knew what the leap would feel like and the missing strength I needed to do more than cling to the bar.

  I fell again, but I knew how it felt to drop into the net. Landing on a net isn’t soft. It’s rough and scratches you as you crawl across to the edge. My knees were scraped up, but I felt joy for the first time. Even as meager as my attempts had been, I had made myself useful—I had performed. I finally understood that it wasn’t just the applause each night, but a sense of accomplishment from the act itself that drove the performers—the very heart of the circus. Tomorrow I would be better. I made a promise that even if I never got to perform under this big top, I would earn my place.

  I climbed the rope again.

  Hugo never left his position, instead choosing to swing on the other bar, watching me. We faced each other and I could see it in his face: He was wondering if I had the determination to keep coming back. As if to answer, I grabbed the bar one more time.