Splendors and Glooms (20 page)

C
lara hung from the gallows in Parsefall’s wagon. It had been a wet week, and the clatter of the wheels was muffled by the sound of splashing. Parsefall slogged through an icy stew of mud and straw, horse manure, and urine. Inside the wagon, Clara was spared the worst of the mire, but she could not help remembering the days when she rode through London in her mother’s carriage. If she walked, it was in the park with her governess; if they had to cross a street, Miss Cameron paid to have a path swept clear. No crossing sweeper ever lifted a broom to sweep a path for Parsefall. It was only too clear that he had no halfpennies to waste on cleanliness. Parsefall cursed the sloppy streets, but only because they slowed him down. He had a show to give, and his mind was on his work.

In the past weeks, Clara had come to look forward to the puppet shows even more than Parsefall did. When he lifted the perch and pulled her strings, her bloodless body seemed to tingle, and she felt as if something quickened inside her. She could almost imagine that her limbs stretched and swayed by their own free will. It was not true, of course. But she wondered if one day it might be true — if somehow Parsefall might help her to cross the border between paralysis and life. With every touch, the bond between them grew stronger. When he played upon her strings, Clara glimpsed the splendors and glooms that haunted his mind. She shared his appetite for prodigies and wonders, for a world where spangles were stars and skeletons frolicked until their bones fell apart.

She knew his fears and his weaknesses. The specter of Grisini lurked in the darkest corners of Parsefall’s mind. Parsefall hated foggy days, not just because they were bad for business but because he was afraid that Grisini might be following him, masked by the fog. Hunger was another, lesser specter, and with hunger came guilt. Parsefall was shocked by how much money he spent on sausage rolls and penny buns. He lied to Lizzie Rose about his daily earnings and concealed from her the shameful fact that he’d bought something to eat. Now and again he bought two buns and put one in his pocket, but if it was his ambition to take the second bun home to Lizzie Rose, he never achieved it. Almost before he knew it, the treat was out of his pocket and between his teeth. He gobbled every crumb, sucked the sugar from his fingers, and despised himself for his greed. Lizzie Rose would scarcely have believed that her adopted brother possessed so tender a conscience: Clara knew better. She recognized guilt, even when it was only a shadow in someone else’s mind.

On that raw day in December, Clara was holding an arabesque, her profile to the audience, when a man strode toward the stage. Clara saw him only from the corner of her eye, but she knew him: a man with hair as dark as hers, broad shouldered and prosperous. She wanted to gasp, to cry out to him. Parsefall spun the perch, making Clara pivot
en pointe.
When she stopped spinning, she was facing her father.

He was as pale as death. She saw him elbow his way forward, close to the front of the stage. Her father, who never shoved, her father, who never shouted, was shouting: “Where did you get that puppet?”

Parsefall’s hand jerked, making Clara jump straight-legged into the air. He swung her offstage, around and behind the backdrop.

“
Where did you get
—?” Dr. Wintermute’s voice was thunderous. His hand reached under the backdrop and seized Clara’s legs.

Parsefall did not let go. Clara’s head strings went taut; she felt the screws grind against her temples. Her father gripped her so tightly that his arm shook. A thrill ran through her like an electric shock.
Why, he loves me,
she thought in amazement. The idea was new to her. If anyone had asked her, she would have said that of course her father loved her; good fathers must always love their children. But she had always known how deeply he mourned Charles Augustus. She was the twin who should have died. Now, feeling the tremor in her father’s hand, she understood that she was precious to him, and she wanted to weep for joy.

One of her head strings snapped. Parsefall shouted, “Leggo!” The audience was murmuring, upset that the show had been interrupted. Parsefall shrilled, “Gimme back my puppet!” and the bystanders backed him up: “That’s right!” “Give ’im ’is puppet and get out of the way!”

“Come on, guv’nor!” shouted a boy from the back of the crowd. “Give it up and let the show go on!”

“It isn’t right to steal a poor boy’s puppet,” said an elderly woman. “That’s his living.”

Dr. Wintermute didn’t seem to have heard. “I know you!” he cried out. “You’re Grisini’s boy! I saw you the day my daughter was kidnapped. Grisini made that puppet, didn’t he? He kidnapped her. He took my Clara.” His voice broke. “Tell me what he did with her.”

“Grisini’s gone,” Parsefall shot back. He corrected himself. “’E’s dead. Bashed ’is brains in. Leggo-a-me!” His voice rose, enlisting the help of the audience. “Leggo-a-me puppet, sir! Don’ ’urt me! I ain’t done nuffink!”

His ploy was effective. Clara heard a rustle from the other side of the curtain. A man said, “Bloomin’ shame.”

The elderly woman quavered, “Stop, sir! If you hurt that boy, I shall call a constable!”

Parsefall squealed like a pig. Dr. Wintermute released Clara and came around the side of the wagon. He seized Parsefall’s collar, holding him prisoner. “What do you mean, he’s dead? He can’t be dead. How can he be dead?”

Parsefall shook himself like a wet cat. He twisted and squirmed. In the scuffle, Clara fell from his hand, landing faceup on the cobblestones.

Two hands reached for her. One hand was large, clean, and strong, a hand that she had loved all her life. The other hand was small and filthy, with one finger missing. In an instant, Clara knew which hand she wanted to capture her.
Please!
she begged. As if he heard her thoughts, Parsefall snatched her up and crammed her inside his jacket.

Run!
thought Clara. She wanted beyond everything to get away. If her father, who loved her, wrested her from Parsefall, he would take her back home again. Her mother would weep over the puppet that resembled her lost daughter. Clara would hang on the wall, next to the death masks of the Others. She would never dance again; she would lose all hope of coming back to life.

She felt Parsefall leap sideways. There was a scuffle. She heard the rattle of the coins in the money box and a series of thumping sounds. Parsefall was packing up the wagon.

“Stop! Thief !” Dr. Wintermute was shouting, but Parsefall leaped forward. The wagon wheels swashed over the cobbles.
He can’t get away,
Clara thought despairingly.
He can’t go fast enough if he has the wagon, and he’ll never abandon the wagon
—

A horse whinnied. A man shouted, “Bloody ’ell!” Parsefall fell headlong, sprawling. Men were shouting, and a woman was screaming.

A gruff voice spoke. “Whoa, now! Steady, now!”

Her father was entreating everyone to remain calm. He said, “Let me help; I’m a doctor —” In an instant, Parsefall was back on his feet and running full speed, one arm around Clara and the other towing the wagon.

He veered to the right. There was a scraping noise: the wagon catching on the corner of a brick building. Parsefall dragged it free. He was panting now, and Clara could hear his heart beat double time. The music box was still tinkling.

Little by little, his pace slowed. His gasps turned to wheezing sounds. When at last he came to a stop, he opened his jacket. Clara’s head fell back. She found herself staring at a single pair of wet trousers, pegged to a clothesline. A cat mewed nearby. Parsefall had brought her to an empty courtyard.

Parsefall took Clara from his jacket and examined her with narrowed eyes. Her head flopped so that her ear touched her shoulder, and her right elbow faced forward. Her left knee bent the wrong way. Parsefall frowned and wiped her sodden skirt against his coat sleeve, an act that did no favors either to Clara or the coat. Then he set her back on the gallows, knelt down on the pavement, and began to unravel her strings.

G
risini’s boy had provoked an accident. His flight through the streets had caused a collision between a closed carriage and a hansom cab. The cabbie had been thrown from his seat, and the woman inside the carriage was sobbing hysterically. The accident gave the boy an advantage; he found a gap in the snarled traffic, forced the wagon through it, and disappeared like an eel into its burrow. Dr. Wintermute saw that further pursuit was futile. He was bound both by conscience and by training to tend to anyone who was hurt. Nevertheless, it cost him dearly to abandon the chase.

He helped the cabbie to his feet, made sure that there was no head injury, and turned his attention to the woman. She was heavily pregnant and panic-stricken. Dr. Wintermute examined her and assured her that all was well. He advised her to return home, loosen her corsets, and spend the rest of the day in bed. Once she had promised to follow his orders, he returned to the cabbie, who was nursing his arm to his chest. Dr. Wintermute diagnosed a sprained wrist. He wrapped it tightly, using his own muffler as a bandage.

After the cabbie drove off, Dr. Wintermute made his way to the curb. He felt shaken. The puppet’s face swam before his mind’s eye: heart shaped, pink cheeked, with Clara’s smile frozen on its lips. Why had Grisini created a puppet in the image of his daughter? How — and when — and what hideous thing did it mean? Dr. Wintermute’s first impulse — to go to the police station — seemed futile. The existence of the puppet proved nothing. He could not tell a police constable how the sight of it had pierced his heart.

He began to walk, not knowing where he was going. He realized after a time that he had missed the cross street that would have taken him home. In the weeks since Clara’s disappearance, Dr. Wintermute had come to dread the house in Chester Square. The atmosphere of grief was stifling, as if the walls had thickened, blocking every breath of air and ray of light. He knew it was his duty to be strong for his wife, but he could not help Ada. In his worst moments he shrank from her. Her anguish increased his own.

He had resumed work in early December. It comforted him to be of use again. When he was with patients, he was himself once more: calm, skilled, compassionate. When he returned home, he changed back into a man he could not respect: a husband too heartsick to ease his wife’s pain, a father who had failed to save even one of his five children.

He became aware that he had wandered into Chelsea. It was a poor section of town, and the narrow houses looked bleak and cheerless. Rubbish lay thick underfoot, and the stink of the polluted river made him wish that he could pull his muffler over his nose. Then it struck him: Professor Grisini lived in Chelsea. He recalled the letter he had written, arranging for the showman to perform at Clara’s party. He remembered the address, even the house number.

His step quickened as he made his way to Danvers Street. The police had assured him that they shared his suspicions of Grisini; they had promised to keep a close watch on him, even stationing a constable to watch Mrs. Pinchbeck’s lodgings at night. Yet they had failed. The officer detective had been forced to admit that Grisini had eluded them. The puppet master had left London, and his unreliable landlady could provide no clue as to where he might be. Now Grisini’s boy had blurted out that his master was not missing, but dead. Dr. Wintermute told himself that it could not be true. He scanned the housefronts for numbers. A servant girl walking her mistress’s dogs skimmed past him. To his surprise, she went straight to the house he was seeking.

She went up the front steps and went in without knocking. After a split second, the door swung back open. There was a cry of distress. Dr. Wintermute rushed forward.

He stopped on the threshold, confused. A young man in a plaid overcoat and chimney-pot hat held the maidservant prisoner; he had both arms around her waist and was planting a series of smacking kisses on her lips. The girl squirmed and struggled, her face screwed up with distaste. The room was alive with barking dogs. Their leashes were twisted together and caught inside in a moth-eaten muff, which bounced over the carpet like a sixth dog.

The servant girl entreated, “Oh, stop,
please
!” and Dr. Wintermute did stop, startled by her voice. The girl was slatternly; her skirts were too short and her apron was soiled, but she spoke in the accents of a young lady. His sense of chivalry awakened, Dr. Wintermute seized the man and swung him around with such force that the chimney-pot hat flew off. “Release her, sir!”

The young man looked blank. He had a fleshy face with a mouth like a baby’s. It was the sort of face that Dr. Wintermute instinctively disliked. Moreover, the man smelled of gin. The girl, seeing her escape, ducked away from the two men and went after the dogs. Dr. Wintermute had thought she was a young woman; she was almost as tall as the man who had tried to kiss her. Now that she knelt on the floor, he saw that her figure was childishly slight and that she wore her hair in plaits. She was only a year or two older than his Clara. A thrill of rage passed through him, and he turned back to the young man with murder in his eyes. “How dare you molest this young person?”