the stage.
‘I shall never yield my secret,’ Carlo said. His voice was hoarse and would not have been audible at the back of the theatre had not the students raised theirs in echo. ‘Never, while breath remains in this body.’
The dwarf’s body was visibly wobbling atop his stilts. The occult symbols stitched to his robe swayed and shimmered.
Devil swung the blade and crushed the small phial of cochineal liquid concealed in his palm. In perfect synchrony the percussion powder detonated in the wings, the lights went down to the crash of a chord and Carlo fell in a heap at the evil philosopher’s feet.
The lights flared again, catching the coils of smoke rising through the vents in the stage. As always the stink of it caught in the back of Devil’s throat. Red liquid ran down the sword blade and smirched his fingers.
The trick was wrong. He knew it even before Carlo fell.
Instead of a neat heap of empty robes supported by a wicker frame there was an inert body. Carlo lay in plain view, his wig askew and his robe caught up to expose a rough wooden limb extension.
The audience had quietened. They waited, collective breath drawn in, for the interesting new direction the illusion must take.
A second of time stretched for Devil into a creeping eternity, and Carlo did not stir. From the darkness at the back of the hall came the slow clapping of a single pair of hands and then more handclaps drew out a whispered hiss that swelled in an instant into a wave of jeering.
Devil held up his hand. ‘The performer is ill.’
He looked over two rows of grinning heads into Eliza Dunlop’s eyes.
‘Dead?’ someone bawled.
‘Dead drunk,’ another hollered.
‘Must be living. ’E’s still got ’is ’ed on.’
Devil waved his hand to the wings.
‘Bring down the curtain.’
When they were screened from the booing and stamping he knelt at Carlo’s side. The dwarf had fainted. Devil shook the wicker cage and his eyes rolled up in his head.
‘God help us,’ Devil muttered.
Even the stagehands, the roughest of men, were disconcerted. Between them Devil and one of the men easily lifted the dwarf’s body with the dangling stilts still attached, and the others bore the cabinet into the wings. Jacko Grady was seething there.
‘Christ Jesus, Wix, what game are you playing now?’
‘Does it look like a game?’
The roar of the audience battered the curtain.
‘Get the next act on. Where are the bloody acrobats?’ the manager yelled. Bascia and her brother ran past, bells tinkling. They somersaulted into the lights as their music struck up. Backstage Carlo was carried into the airless dressing space. They laid him on the floor, took off the costume trappings and Devil stooped to unfasten the stilts. It was awkward enough to do and yet the dwarf had to carry out the manoeuvre in seconds beneath the stage trapdoor before he flew to take up his cramped position in the cabinet.
‘Get some water,’ Devil commanded but no one in the little crowd of gawping performers made a move. They stood looking down at the unconscious dwarf as if they too could not quite believe that this was not part of a new trick.
There was a movement at the edge of the circle.
‘Let him breathe, for God’s sake’, Eliza Dunlop said. She knelt to place her hand on Carlo’s forehead and then lifted his wrist to feel his pulse.
‘He is burning up with fever. How long has he been ill?’ Her eyes met Devil’s again, across the prostrate body.
‘Two days.’
‘He should not be here. He should be in his bed.’ Her rebuke was crisp. Even in his anxiety Devil was irritated by her assumption that he and Carlo had any choice in the matter of where to be.
‘Thank you for your opinion,’ he snapped.
‘Not at all.’ She leaned closer to Carlo and as if her proximity communicated itself to him the dwarf’s eyelids fluttered open. His chest heaved as he tried to cough. Eliza held up her hand and a cup of water was at last passed through the knot of spectators. As she gently supported Carlo’s shoulders and raised the cup to his lips Grady appeared, crimson in the face and furious.
‘Move, all of you. It’s a sick dwarf here, not a peep show. This performance is already a catastrophe. Get on and give ’em their money’s worth.’
The other performers slid aside, leaving only Devil and Heinrich Bayer beside Eliza and Carlo. Grady planted his legs apart and his belly jutted over them like a ship’s prow. Carlo breathed out a tiny sigh and turned his head away from its shadow. His horsehair wig was forced askew and Eliza removed it, stroking the dwarf’s matted hair back from his face.
Grady said, ‘I hope whatever plague the creature has is not infectious. Take him away, Wix. And get yourselves back for tomorrow’s matinée if you want to go on working for me.’
‘Wait one moment,’ Devil countered. He stepped across Carlo and brought his face up close to Grady’s, although the man’s breath was foetid enough to drive him back again. ‘We have a contract to discuss. You owe me—’
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