Corsets & Clockwork Read online

  Quint barely had time to take notice of the kerfuffle, though. All of his time was spent in rehearsal sessions with Jewel. And those moments seemed to pass in a kind of dreamlike haze. Kingfisher marvellous creation soaked up Quint's direction like a thirsty sponge. The subtlety and nuance of her performance grew exponentially, a balm to his artistic soul. And her grace and beauty touched his heart. When, in a dress run of the balcony scene, she reached out to him and asked, "Dost thou love me?" Quint felt a twinge in his chest, and a deep, strange happiness.

  It was a joy that was only compounded by the fact that, when he turned to swear his love to her by the light of the moon, it was to see that--thanks to Jewel's precise memory--the moon was indeed shining down over the Aurora's stage.

  * * *

  The week before opening was one of great excitement. There were new and ingenious set pieces built for the production, designed--of course--by Kingfisher himself. It would make all of the backstage machinations so much easier. Not that the actors wouldn't be kept busy. In such a small company, everyone had a part to play, off stage as well as on. Quint handled all the masks and cloaks and random bits of scenery. The actor playing Mercutio took care of swords and torches. Jewel, along with her moon duties, would be responsible for preparing the props table each night. For that, Quint was inordinately grateful. When Marjorie had done it, she'd always forgotten half of the items and the other actors would have to run around looking for things or go onstage empty-handed.

  When it finally came time for the curtain to rise, Quint's pre-show jitters gave way to a kind of euphoria. And more than halfway through the performance, he realized that the show was progressing better than he'd even dared hope. Not a single hitch so far and not just where Kingfisher's star was concerned. In fact, it seemed that Jewel's presence onstage, instead of overshadowing them, had actually caused the other actors in the company to step up their game. They were all bloody brilliant. Quint could feel the over-capacity crowd hanging on every word. Just as he was.

  Standing in the darkness of the wings, in the midst of Act IV, he heard Jewel say, "'I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins that almost freezes up the heat of life,'" and he felt a shiver run up his own spine. The coaching sessions he'd done with the Actromaton really had worked wonders for her. With her flawless command of the lines and--thanks to his work with her--a precise understanding of how to act them, she was scintillating. She was perfect. She was Juliet.

  And Quint suddenly, utterly, understood why Romeo loved her so.

  Loved her enough to take poison in her tomb when he thought she was dead, so that he could lie there with her for all eternity. "'Thus, with a kiss, I die!'" Quint proclaimed, drinking off the potion in the black glass vial that Jewel had left prepared for him backstage. Onstage under the lights, he noticed that the liquid stained his fingertips bright green ... and then Quint fell to the ground beside Juliet's bier, quite paralysed, unable even to close his eyes as he felt his heart begin to slow throughout the remainder of the scene.

  Oh, God, he thought as Juliet woke, banished the Friar from her tomb, and knelt over his body. His barely breathing body.

  We've taught her too well, he thought.

  Somewhere along the line, somewhere during rehersals, it had ceased to be a play for her. In Jewel's mind, Romeo took poison and Romeo died for love of her. For love of Juliet. And so, knowing that as a certainty, she had set the props table with a vial of Kingfisher's "tonic." And now Quint was going to die.

  Because of the simple fact that as human--more than human--as she seemed to be ... his Jewel was not. She was an illusion.

  She knelt at his side and bent over him, smiling sadly. Her beautiful eyes were incapable of producing moisture and yet, in that moment, they sparkled so brightly--as if with unshed tears--that the effect was more convincing than if Marjorie Dalliance had cried out a river. Women in the audience, maybe men too, were sobbing into handkerchiefs.

  Quint felt Jewel's pain. Her love. He just couldn't feel anything else. His body had gone numb. Nerveless. He tried to speak, to tell her, No! this isn't real!

  But it was. It was the most convincing performance that his uncle's warped and weathered stage had ever played host to.

  Jewel leaned down to caress his face with her cool, smooth fingertips.

  He was really going to die. She was, too.

  Real death. Real ... love?

  Quint's slowing heart ached, even as--with a wrenching cry--Jewel drove an all-too-real dagger through her own, destroying the delicate, irreplaceable mechanism that kept her functioning. Dark, honey-red hydraulic fluid seeped through the brocaded fabric of her costume in a widening stain, and she fell across his body with a last, lingering sigh of pure contentment.

  * * *

  It was almost a full month before Quint could stand without holding on to a chair or the wall for support. His uncle told him that he was very lucky indeed to have survived. Kingfisher had been convinced that he would be dead within the hour. The dram Jewel had given him should have stopped his heart that very night. Just as hers had. Quint secretly wondered if some part of the Actromaton's programming had fought with her driving need for realism. He imagined that maybe she had diluted the deadly stuff--perhaps even in spite of herself. He would never know. Days later, Kingfisher had vanished, taking his now-defunct creation with him. When Agamemnon had gone round to his house, it was only to find the place deserted. As empty as if it had never been occupied.

  At any rate, Quint was alive.

  In fits and starts, he had regained first consciousness and then his mental faculties--although he still tended to drift a bit in conversations if he didn't concentrate very hard. The paralysis had dissipated, eventually, and his muscles regained their strength and suppleness. But Quintillius Farthing's wasn't the only miraculous recovery.

  The Aurora was back in business. The over-capacity crowd that had paid wildly inflated prices to see the spectacle of the Actromaton's first--and, sadly, last--performance had given the company a tremendous boost. And not just financially. While Quint had been convalescing, Agamemnon had announced a casting call for an entirely new production. Still Shakespeare, of course, but a comedy this time--All's Well That Ends Well. Actors and actresses--real ones, talented ones--had returned to Palace Row to sign up for auditions now that the Aurora once again had the money to pay.

  Agamemnon asked Quint to run them.

  It was near the end of the day when she walked in. Silhouetted in the dwindling light of the late afternoon, all Quint saw was a glint of coppery curls underneath a stylish feather bonnet, and the hourglass contours of corset and skirts. His breath caught in his throat. But then the young woman stepped inside the doorway and he blinked and took a slow step toward her.

  "I hope I'm not too late," said the girl in a sweetly musical voice.

  Quint rushed forward, extending a hand. "Not at all ... Miss ...?"

  "My name is Sapphy," she said, smiling, reaching forward to take Quint's hand in her own small, warm one. "It's short for Sapphire ..."

  A jewel, Quint thought. The pang in his heart was fleeting as he bent low over her hand and then raised his eyes. She blushed prettily and he led the lovely young actress toward the stage saying, "And what piece would you like to read for

  me today, Miss Sapphire?"

  He smiled when she chose something not from Romeo and

  Juliet, and he settled back in his seat to watch.

  The Cannibal Fiend of Rotherhithe

  BY FREWIN JONES

  PART THE FIRST

  Hector MacAlindon and the North Sea Mermaid

  NOW, WHEN A person hears the word mermaid, certain images will probably unfurl themselves across the mythic canvas of their mind, perhaps of silky sirens frolicking amidst the billows of the cobalt-blue sea, laughing and sporting with dolphins and flying fish. Or maybe they might conjure a picture of a beautiful woman seated upon a rock contemplatively combing her flowing tresses, her lips rich and red, her eyes
ocean-green and filled with arcane knowledge, her long tail iridescent with shining scales, the pale flukes spread like webbed fingers, slapping idly at the foam.

  Or if they're of a mind to fear such things, perhaps they will imagine a dark and stormy night, the moon shrouded in a veil of lace, mariners peering with puckered brows into a deep booming darkness flecked with white: the grinning teeth of surf on oil-black and sharp-fanged rocks. And they cock an ear and hear sweet dulcet voices calling, calling. And they leap overboard for the heady delight of it and are seen nevermore.

  The reality, as it turns out, is somewhat different, as Hector MacAlindon discovered one dark night.

  Not that Hector Mac ever had a mind for the fantastic or the wonderful. Hector was a dull, grimy, grim, gloomy, practical shred of a man. He lived alone in a cottage on a cliff that overlooked the bitter wastes of the English North Sea. Well, I call it a cottage, but hovel would be a better word for the dilapidated heap of mouldering stone and slate where he lived in dour isolation. The cracks between the stones were stuffed with rags and clods of mud, but the wind still fingered its way in on cold winter nights, plucking at Hector's threadbare blankets, insinuating its way into bed beside him, holding him in its arctic embrace and freezing his feet to shards of blue ice.

  And he had no wife to warm his thin bones, no woman to light his lamps and heat the grey stew in his Crock-pot, no gentle hand to soothe his brow when he came home after a long shift, dog-tired and sick at heart. No fleshy body to lie between him and the biting north wind. He was quite alone, and it gnawed at him.

  Hector MacAlindon eked out a meagre existence as an undersea trawler-man. Every evening he'd make his way down the cliff path to the long strand where the massive black submersibles stood like beached whales between the wooden groynes, their high, thin smokestacks lifting to the clouded heavens like the lone and mute pipes of some broken-down old church organ. The ugly submersibles stank of stale brine and rotting seaweed, and of engine oil and coal, their great copper-clad hulks stamped with barnacles and crawling with crabs and starfish.

  Every evening it would be Hector's duty to climb the slimy rail to the porthole door and clamber in and spin the wheel to make the seal watertight.

  Then he would make his way through the labyrinth of machinery, ducking the hanging hawsers, avoiding the hissing and spitting steam pipes, checking the dials and meters and gauges and the pistons and cylinders and pumps to make sure the stokers had done their jobs right, and that the furnaces were blazing.

  Finally, he'd settle into the pilot's seat and pull the levers and trim the gyres and set the ratchets clanking. The engines would begin to rumble and roar and grey smoke would belch from the tall smokestacks as the undersea trawler crawled its way down the filthy sand and slowly sank beneath the waves until all that remained above the water were the five black chimney-tops trailing their thick ashy plumes.

  He remembered, years back, when he'd been an apprentice--in those days the undersea trawlers had names and personalities and were crewed by a jolly bunch of old salts. But these days there was just him and the weary, complaining engines and the gaping bell-shaped mouth of the trawler and the catch-tanks that filled with the swirl of black water, and the corroding filters and the holding pens into which the fish were spat. And there was the noise, of course: the never-ending, mind-shredding noise of the steam engines clanking and clanging and shrieking and raving.

  And no hope of a cool hand to soothe his brow at the end of his twelve-hour shift. No wife to give him ease. No joy.

  Except for that one unbelievable night when something large and fierce came shooting into the catch-tank, screaming and thrashing and writhing and wailing.

  Hector slammed his hand down on the KILL button and the whole shuddering and booming contraption came to a sudden halt on the seabed. At first he thought a person had been caught by the suction pumps. A swimmer, dragged under by the rip of the in-drawn water. But at night? At this depth? In winter?

  More alarmed that he might get the blame for the person's death than fearing for the safety of the victim, Hector scuttled down the vertical iron stair and ran breathlessly along the ramps and gantries and corridors in the guts of the machine until he stood staring down into the rush and flurry of the half-filled catch-tank.

  A pale, fearful face peered up at him from the belly of the water. Long dark hair hung lank about the head. The eyes were huge and luminous. A hand reached up pitifully.

  Hector leaned as far over the rail as he dared and snatched at the hand. Cold! Cold as death! But he held on and lugged the terrified woman up out of the water, his eyes filling with salt spray so that he could hardly see. He managed to grab the woman around the waist as she came over the rail and a moment later the weight of her threw him onto his back and the air was beaten out of his lungs. She felt strangely slimy in his grip. She floundered about on top of him for a moment then he heard a dull thud and the woman became still. He guessed she had bumped her head on some hard iron protuberance and that the jolt had rendered her unconscious.

  Gathering his wits, Hector pushed the limp form off himself and got to his feet. The light was not good down there, the wall lamps occluded by years of grime and oily smears. But the illumination was adequate enough for Hector MacAlindon to trust his eyes as he stared down at that sinuous, supine shape, still shedding water as it lay immobile at his feet.

  From the waist up, she was of human shape, but from the hips down she was all fish, grey-scaled and limned with pale phlegm-coloured fins. Trembling from the shock, Hector Mac crouched at the thing's side and turned her onto her back. His stomach churned and he started away.

  Close up, the face was far from human. In fact, he found the sight of the mermaid's face all the more disgusting because it was neither pure fish nor--Watt help him--pure human! It was an ugly, blue-skinned, blubber-lipped, goggle-eyed mixture of human and fish, with long thin tentacles or feelers twitching at the side of the down-curved mouth. And the hair was rank and flat like shredded seaweed, and she stank and froth bubbled down her chin. A necklace of blue periwinkle shells hung about her thick neck, but otherwise, she was naked.

  Recovering a little, Hector Mac came down on his knees at her side, brushing the slithery hair away from her blue upper body and gazing ruminatively at the small blue-tipped bosom that was revealed. He lifted her limp arm and examined the bony white fingers with their translucent webbing in between.

  The mermaid was breathing. He watched her for a while, wondering whether she would drown of air, like fish did.

  Time passed and she did not. A thought burrowed through his brain like a satanic weevil. A smile crooked the corner of his mouth.

  "You stay there, my girl," he said, his voice creaky because he had not used it for so long. "You're a gift from the deep, that's what you are. I'm going to take you home. You're not many a man's idea of the perfect wife, but I'm not a fussy fellow, and you'll do for me, oh, yes you will. You'll do for me just fine."

  And with that, he went lurching along the gantry in search of some stout rope and a large canvas sack.

  * * *

  I'll not dwell too much on the life Hector MacAlindon and his new-trawled wife led in the cottage on the cliffs. They had little in common and he had to keep a rope around her tail to stop her from escaping. She had no language, so far as he could make out, communicating in high-pitched squeaks and clicks and whoops, and showing her displeasure with snapping teeth and pinching fingers and sometimes with a whack of her thick, strong tail that would tip her husband base over apex and throw him across the room. But she learned quickly not to do that. Hector wasn't much of a man, but he knew how to wield a burning stick, and the mermaid was terribly afraid of fire and screamed like a banshee when her skin sizzled.

  But it taught her to be dutiful and Hector found that she did not need to be kept wet, which was a blessing when he came home in the weary morning and slipped into bed beside her.

  And here's where I draw a veil, except to say t
hat somehow the mermaid became pregnant, and after four swollen months of pain and grief and shrieking a girl-child was born and the mermaid died of it and her husband dragged her to the cliff edge and tipped her over so that she fell, rag-limp, down into the foaming brine without even a whispered farewell from her cold-hearted spouse.

  The mermaid's child seemed more human than aquatic, with white skin and two legs and no fins that her father could see. Hector cut raw seal blubber into thin strips to feed her, and she seemed to like it. He made her a playpen prison of wooden slats and chicken wire, and clamped a chain around her left leg and fed her on fish heads and entrails and on snails and slugs and stagnant water, working on the basis that even this squalling brat was better company than none at all. And although there was little about her that gave away the secret of her fishy maternal line, when she teethed, the teeth were white and needle-thin and pointed like the teeth of a pike, and her mouth was full of them.

  He found the periwinkle shell necklace among the folds of his bedclothes and he gave it to the babe to play with, and it quietened her crying. To assuage his solitude he would speak to the infant, and so he learned that she could understand him and form words. And he called her Silka and grew a little fond of her, so long as she behaved herself and did exactly as she was told. He kept her captive in the cottage as her infancy passed and she turned into a young girl with skin like blue-veined ivory and hair so black that in a certain light it seemed almost ultramarine.

  And she took to wearing her mother's necklace about her slender throat. And she had quick wits and learned fast and was deft with her long slender nimble fingers. And she had large grey eyes and wide cheekbones and a narrow little chin, and sometimes she even smiled and looked almost pretty as she peered out between the curtains of her oil-black hair. Just so long as she smiled with her lips closed and kept her dreadful teeth hidden away.