Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

I bared my teeth, then bowed my head so that he would not see. I felt the Small Voices stirring inside me, the Boy who woke hungrily at any sign of anger or unease. My heart quickened; the blood tapped hard and fast against a node beneath my left temple.

“Thank you, sieur,” I whispered, shrugging myself deeper into the folds of Viola’s tattered scarf. From those assembled before the stage came murmurings more strident than they had been earlier. The performance was starting late. Toby straightened, his shoulders brushing a flat as he pulled taut the folds of the cape he wore as Orsino.

“Gower Miramar has asked myself and Miss Scarlet to dine afterward. If he is pleased with your performance he will no doubt request your company as well. He has a taste for young men.”

A soft threat therein. I had sworn chastity before Toby Rhymer and the others, save Miss Scarlet and Justice, who knew my secret. For I had seen that the Players were often expected to perform more than once each evening. Besides myself, only Miss Scarlet refrained from these engagements, drawing back her lip with the merest hint of a sneer as she withdrew her gloved hands from the kisses of her admirers—Paphians, mostly, and the occasional Zoologist.

“I will join him at dinner, if he wants. But not afterward,” I replied. But my heart hammered at the thought of encountering new blood that evening.

“Time, Toby!” hissed Fabian from the wings. He shoved the melodeon into Gitana’s arms as Toby strode onstage to arrange himself languidly as the lovesick Duke, raising his face to catch the dimpled light from an electrified follow-spot. Gitana plunked the melodeon’s keys desultorily, rolling her eyes so that Mehitabel collapsed giggling beside a papier-mache boxtree. Toby’s arm lolled behind Mehitabel. I watched him pinch her until she grimaced and turned her pretty blank eyes on the audience, as Justice tugged back the proscenium curtain upon Toby’s sighs.

“ ‘ If music be the food of love, play on! Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die …’”

I caught the amused glances of several of the audience as Gitana’s melodeon gave a melancholy wheeze. I counted seventeen of them, mostly Paphians in gaudy drag. A small audience. Most of the Hill Magdalena Ardent was at High Brazil that evening, attending the Butterfly Ball. But Miramar hoped to impress his Botanist guests with our command performance, and so obtain more of last spring’s small harvest of saffron.

The mingled stench of the Paphians’ perfumes did not discourage the lewd ministrations of the Botanists, all women of surpassing plainness. In the center seat smiled a tall Paphian, very thin, with an ascetically beautiful face counterpointed by sumptuous robes of violet sateen aglow with azure lumens. He would be the suzein, Gower Miramar. Beside him sat a very homely Botanist in sober brown. Her hands twitched in her lap, seemingly to keep them from caressing the child seated next to her. A very small girl in a violet dress, her golden curls caught up in an elaborate coiffure braided with feathers and triangulated shards of glazed eelskin. For some reason she fascinated me. A flicker of feeling like a lizard’s tongue brushed against my heart.

Why her? I thought, trying to slow my breathing. I had not seen her face before. Yet something woke in me, some hunger or desire perhaps of the Boy eager to feed. She could not have been more than six or seven. Yet there was something in the way she tipped her head to listen to the Botanist’s smug whisper, a certain hauteur to her child’s bearing and the stiffness with which she held in her velvet lap an elaborate dorado fan. The fan seemed to twitch of itself as the Botanist’s suggestions took a more lecherous turn. In all of this I sensed a refined quality which belied the pale triangular face with its huge and innocent amber eyes. A strange excitement seized me, compounded equally of hunger, fear, and lust. I stepped into the folds of the proscenium curtains, the better to observe this strange child and allow myself to be engulfed by the emotions she roused. But just as the sharp taste flooded my mouth Toby careened into me as he made his exit and prodded me with his walking-stick.

“Now, boy!” he ordered. He pushed me from the velvet folds onto the momentarily darkened stage behind him.

The spotlight a lance through my eyes. A dazzling film of blood for an instant obscures my sight. Before me stands Justice, the Captain once again. From the audience a very soft sound, like a child starting from sleep only to plummet back into dreams. Then my own voice strained with desperation and loss as I tugged at the Captain’s sleeve:

“‘ What country, friend, is this?’”

Justice’s eyes avoid mine so that I will not see his pain and desire there, even now, even alone with me upon a stage before a score of opium-besotted courtesans and their sniggering Patrons.

“’ This is Illyria, lady.’”

I drew the scarf more tightly about my face as my voice rose:

“ ‘ And what should I do in Illyria?

My brother he is in Elysium.

Perchance he is not drowned. What think you?’“

Justice countered:

“ ‘ It is perchance that you yourself were saved.’”

I cried:

“ ‘ Oh my poor brother! And ‘so perchance may he be!’”

Another sound from the audience. A single high voice called out in surprise and distress. I caught the shape of a name. So profound was the sense of loss in that sweet tone that I turned downstage and searched the rows of seats to see who was so moved.

The seat beside the lecherous Botanist was now empty. The suzein glanced about anxiously. Then I saw at the lip of the stage the little girl who had sat near him. Her coiffure bobbed as she tried to clamber onto the stage, her golden eyes fixed upon me.

“Raphael!” she cried. As she reached one hand toward me she slipped. Before she could fall she was caught by her frowning Botanist Patron, who carried her to the back of the theater, scolding her loudly.

From offstage came Toby’s bellowed whisper, “Justice!” I glanced back to Justice, who was also staring after the protesting child.

I coughed. Justice turned to me and faltered:

“ ‘ True madam, and to comfort you with chance …’”

The scene wound on until the Captain led me offstage to disguise me as young Cesario. I shrugged off Justice’s hand and hurried to where Miss Scarlet waited with my costume change.

“The Paphians are taken with you,” she whispered, helping me step from skirts to trousers as she teetered in Olivia’s high-buttoned boots. But a shred of uncertainty wafted through her voice. She twitched her nose worriedly. Over the reek of white lead powder and rouge I caught the fulsome smell of her unease.

“What is it?” I grabbed her arm and felt through layers of crinoline the hair and muscle strung like rope. “What happened to that child? Did you recognize her?”

“No,” said Miss Scarlet; then, “I don’t know, Wendy.” I stooped so that she could remove my wig and tousle my short hair so that it resembled a boy’s. “They seem to sense something. Miramar—”

“The suzein?”

She nodded. “He didn’t take his eyes off you.”

“I will not traffic with Paphians,” I said. But Miss Scarlet shook her head, indicating silence as she glanced behind me to where the other actors fussed with their costumes.

“That may be so; but you draw them to yourself all the same, dear friend.” She sighed, fastening the last lace upon my jacket. “Be quick now, or you’ll miss the cue.”