Winterlong (26 page)

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.”

I strode out beside Gitana, herself still attired as a manservant (her downy mustache helped). I paused upstage to allow the audience a moment to note the effectiveness of my masculine attire. That delighted gasp of amused recognition I was accustomed to by now; but then I heard a sharper intake of breath from several in the audience. Suddenly I felt my knees shake, knew the vertiginous approach that meant I was flashing onto something else,
someone
else, and who was it this time?

Emma Aidan Melisande?

Morgan Justice Scarlet Pan … ?‘

Or
Him,
the heavy thing I bore like a dart lodged immovably inside my head, leeching all those others into Himself until He might devour me as well? I began to shake, caught Gitana’s alarmed stare, and realized that for the first time I had dried up. Behind me Toby had already made his entrance.

“
‘On your attendance, my lord, here!’”
I stammered as Gitana scampered offstage. Toby smiled. He cuffed me with grim playfulness as he walked upstage, nearly knocking me to the floor.

“
‘Stand you awhile aloof, Cesario,’”
he commanded.

I caught my breath and balance, made a low bow and let the blood rush to my head. Then I straightened to continue with the scene. As we bantered, the Voices inside my head crept back into their secret places, small creatures with patient claws. A pulse of adrenaline. I spun on my heel to exit and dared a direct glance at the audience, aimed my sight at the center row where the suzein sat—

Bolt upright, staring at me with utter amazement. As I stepped offstage I heard his voice from the front of the house, repeating softly but insistently a name:

Raphael.

“You are his very likeness.”

The tumbler the suzein handed me glittered green with sweetmint tea. We were gathered in the Pandoric Seraglio of the House Miramar. A number of television monitors were set about the chamber, hundreds of years old and recently acquired from the Historians. Through their cracked glass flickered candlelight, and in some of them little figures had been set, dolls and small automatons, robotic hands encrusted with rings and armillas, dried nosegays of roses and lilies-of-the valley. I could smell the opiated fumes rising from the narghile in Toby’s hand. Beside the suzein three leaden-eyed Botanists sprawled upon pillows. Seated near me were Miss Scarlet (refusing like myself all refreshment save plain tea and a plate of sweet loquats), Justice, and Toby Rhymer.

“Master Aidan is an almost supernaturally talented young man,” said Miss Scarlet, drawing back her long upper Lip to show yellow teeth. She inclined her head to Gower Miramar, plucking a loquat from the platter and offering it to the suzein.

“Thank you, Miss Scarlet,” replied Miramar. When he moved, the azure lumens on his robes blinked to detail the constellation known as The Capitol. Behind him our shadows fluttered upon the seraglio’s tapestried walls, were trapped within the gold-shot eyes of the ancient monitors. A small room, oddly shaped so that the soft and richly hued cloths fluttering from the ceiling made it seem we were embarked upon some strange vessel. Miramar crumbled a leaf of sweet-smelling herb before his face and inhaled before continuing.

“Ah, Miss Scarlet! Aidan’s talent I have no doubt of—a lovely performance, sieur,” he said, turning to me. “I have always respected Toby’s craft, his attention to the details of an ancient art. Among other things, encouraging young men to play the feminine roles originally written for them.”

Miss Scarlet sniffed. I had to keep from smiling at the remarkable conceit of a girl disguised as a boy disguised as a girl traveling incognito upon the stage!

“But you know I am not Raphael Miramar,” I said again. Across from me a young Botanist snored. “You are certain of that.”

“I am,” said Miramar; but he looked disturbed. His glance lingered again upon my throat, where earlier his long fingers had sought a birthmark that was not there. “Your learning proves you grew up among the Librarians after your parents’ death—” (This was the story Justice and I had created to explain my erudition, if not my beauty.) “But you are certain you have no surviving family? No sister?”

I laughed, dread uncoiling inside me like an asp. “No, sieur! No sister—

“
I am all the daughters of my father’s house, And all the brothers too—
”

And I am certain I have no brother.”

Miramar sighed. “Well, it is very strange then. The favorite of our House left here two months back: Raphael, whom you so closely resemble that I thought you must be that other child I sold to the Ascendants many years ago …”

My fingers tightened upon my tumbler. It was as if some great and terrible vista was opening before me; as though a mountain that for my entire life had reared above my home had suddenly one day begun to tremble and fall into ruin.

A brother,
I thought. From beneath the layers of scarred brain tissue that buried my past something stirred, thrashed as in wakefulness and then fell back into the abyss.

A brother; a twin brother. Emma and Aidan Harrow, and now myself: another twin. Another girl torn from her brother …

No wonder I had been Emma’s pet. No wonder it had not been difficult to pattern me with the intricate spires and helices of her tortured consciousness; no wonder I had driven her to madness and suicide, when through me she could not reclaim the boy she had loved and lost but never escaped from.

It can’t be true,
I thought; but inside me a Small Voice (Dr. Harrow’s perhaps; but I could not be sure) said:
It is so.

Abruptly I remembered where I was and drew myself up to gaze at Justice across the table from me. He blinked, once, twice, and gazed at me with wonder.

Say nothing!
I tried to command him with my eyes. But already he spoke, phrasing a question with stunned slowness.

“You sold her to the
Ascendants?”

“Yes,” said Miramar. Next to him Toby Rhymer tapped a generous stream of brown powder from a small vial into his tea. Miss Scarlet sat very straight beside him on two pillows, her black eyes fixed upon mine. “There were two children—”

Miramar hesitated. Toby quaffed his drink and belched loudly, then with eyes closed leaned back against the tapestried wall. The Botanists slept on, their snores stirring the fragrant air with a faint tepid odor of earth and fish emulsion. Only Justice and Miss Scarlet and myself waited for the suzein to continue. He glanced at each of us in turn, seeming to measure one against the other.

“Well,” he said at last. His gaze settled upon me. “It was some time ago—
years
ago, oh—!” He turned his palms upward in a helpless gesture. “We are no good at these things, keeping track! Doctor Foster would know; but he is at nocturne castigations. But there
were
two children, a boy and a girl. Twins. I took them in, because they were very beautiful. The mother I left to the lazars. She was scarred from childbirth. And she was mad, she talked of visions, of seeing the Magdalene and—Oh, it was such a long time ago, I can’t remember it all.

“The little girl was mad as well. At least Doctor Foster thought so. She couldn’t talk, not to be understood. Just nonsense with her brother. Raphael Miramar, my dearest child.” He sighed and stared at me.

“Even your eyes are much like his,” he said after a moment. He beckoned me closer. “And not just the color: those same wild gray eyes. Even as a child Raphael had wild eyes, always looking into corners and finding the oddest things …

With a dismissive gesture he flicked his fingers. He turned to Miss Scarlet and added graciously, “But your eyes as well are profound, and a lovely shade of brown.”

Smiling, she accepted the compliment, her black lashes fluttering as she replied.

“Ah yes; but Aidan does have a powerful vision, a rare and marvelous gift for charming his audiences. It is evident from the claques who are turning out to see him. We have not enjoyed such a success since I first joined the troupe.” She regarded me with that stare holding within it the long shadows of barred cages and moon-tossed trees. “And they
are
lovely—

“
‘Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In Death’s dream kingdom these do not appear …’”

She quoted softly, to herself. Miramar nodded, his fingers playing with a braided tassel hanging from the wall behind him.

“I do not understand why he left,” he said at last. He stretched his hand across the table toward me, as if I might answer the question half-asked. “He was the loveliest of us all …

“You must have some understanding of that, Aidan: to command by a look alone, by looks alone—?”

“I have never sought to command,” I said. But I felt the flare of that raging Small Voice I knew betrayed my words.

Because I did seek power; and had found it upon the stage. There I might command by my eyes alone, where rapt faces turned upon me,
me,
ME!—not Emma Harrow or Toby Rhymer or even Miss Scarlet Pan, the Prodigy of a Prodigal Age—but myself, Wendy Wanders, the idiot savant, the reclaimed autist, the wild girl of the Human Engineering Laboratory.

“—not meant as an insult, my dear young sieur, please forgive my clumsy words—”

I snapped my head back up from where it had bowed, perilously close to striking the edge of the table I clutched with white fingers. “Forgive me,” I whispered. Miss Scarlet eyed me with alarm, but Gower Miramar continued heedlessly.

“No, it was rude of me—there is no question but that you are a different sort entirely from that poor sick child and even from my beloved Raphael.
He
lacks all discipline, save in the amatory arts; and he is too easily distracted, too easily seduced by dreams of power.”

He paused to pour a stream of green tea from the samovar into Miss Scarlet’s glass.

“Thank you,” she said. “But what became of the girl?”

Miramar refilled his tumbler, held it before a candle so that emerald rays sprang from the faceted glass. “One day Doctor Foster met an Ascendant woman at a masque, a Physician. He was more involved in trade with the out-lands then, Doctor Foster. She had accompanied a group of Physicians from the Citadel; they were being entertained by the Botanists. They were looking for research subjects, they had brought things to trade for them: a generator, cilia ampules, prosthetics.

“She told him of her work. I would imagine she even asked his advice. He is a very brilliant man, our Doctor Foster …

“She believed it might be possible to cure this child. At the very least she would be well cared for. She was so very beautiful, I didn’t have the heart to let her die.

“We sold her to the Ascendants.”

He stared at me for a long moment, shaking his head. “She was a lovely girl; but she banged her head and her tears bled all the time. There was nothing we could do.” And he shrugged and drank the rest of his tea.

From across the room I could feel Justice’s excitement. Miss Scarlet raised an eyebrow: she feared he would betray me. I was afraid myself that this news would prove too much for me to absorb at once. I leaned across the table to take Justice’s hand. I hoped that the suzein would not see how my own shook.

“My dear friend, this pretty story has tired you!” The words sounded so false that I expected Justice to rebuke me. Instead he only trembled as I stepped around the sleeping Botanists to sit beside him.

I glanced up at Miramar. “Can you arrange for a palanquin to return Justice and myself to the theater on Library Hill?”

Disappointment creased his face. “I had planned for all of you to spend the night, as my guests. After matins I’ve arranged for a Sapphic burletta—not the same sort of entertainment as you offer, young sieur, but we consider ourselves artists too.”

I began to protest, when I glimpsed Toby Rhymer regarding me with one eye slitted open even as he feigned sleep. Beneath the table Miss Scarlet’s foot curled about my ankle.

Beware!
She mouthed the word.

I nodded, then raised Justice’s hand to my lips and kissed it. My tongue darted between his fingers to taste desire salted with a brackish haze of opium; a sluggish remnant of exhilaration from our play; and fear.

“Perhaps you are too genteel for our entertainments,” Miramar suggested, a slight downward tug to his butterfly mouth.

“I would not dream of refusing your hospitality,” I demurred. I allowed myself a look at Toby. His raptor’s eye caught my own. For a moment he held it in silent struggle before releasing my gaze and once more pretending sleep. “It is just that I fear my companion has drunk too much of your Lethian cup—”