THE ILLUSIONISTS
Rosie Thomas

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007512041

Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780007512034

Version: 2015-02-23

Dedication

For my family

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Two

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part Three

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Author Q&A

Reading group guide

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Rosie Thomas

About the Publisher

PART ONE

ONE

London 1885

Hector Crumhall, known to his legions of enemies and even his few friends as Devil Wix, sauntered up the alley as if he owned every cobblestone and sooty brick. He stepped over the runnel of filth that ran down the middle, touching the brim of his bowler in a mocking salute to Annie Fowler who was seated in the doorway of her house. Two of her girls, torn robes barely covering their shoulders, lounged at an upstairs window with a tin cup on the sill between them.

‘Good afternoon to you, ladies,’ Devil called.

Annie took her pipe out of her mouth, cleared her throat and spat.

A pair of urchins emerged from the shelter of some crates that had once held fish from the market. They came at Devil with their hands out, driven by desperation rather than any hope that he might drop them a coin.

‘Mister?’ the bigger one wheedled. They were poised to run in case he lashed out.

Devil stopped. Except for the two brats the only onlookers were Annie and the listless drabs, but he was unable to resist any audience for a trick. He slid two fingers into a waistcoat pocket, displacing the watch chain with his thumb. There was no timepiece on the end of the chain, but who was to know such a detail? He slipped out a bright penny and flicked it into the air. The boys’ heads jerked as they followed its ascent and descent, and they sighed when Devil’s fist closed on it. He repeated the flick and catch a second time, and then a third, and the fourth time the boys’ heads hardly moved. But Devil’s fist didn’t close again. Instead he spread his palm and gazed into the air as if searching for the penny. The boys gaped and spun on their heels, straining to hear the coin’s clink, hunched in their anxiety to pounce on it. No clatter or roll sounded. Thin air had seemingly eaten the penny.

Devil frowned, raising his arm to cuff the nearest boy for losing his coin. The child scuttled off and Devil caught the ear of his slower companion. The boy immediately twisted and yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Lemme go, I done nothing.’

Devil groped behind the other ear and produced a red apple. Mouth open, the boy squirmed free and snatched at the fruit but Devil held it just out of his reach. Shaking his head in reproach he bit luxuriously into it. The boy groaned and the girls jeered from their window. Devil continued his interrupted stroll up the alley, chewing with relish and smiling at the thin shaft of sunlight that slid between the overhanging eaves.

The street into which he emerged was hardly wider than its tributary alley but there were more people here. Men leaned against the house walls, dirty-faced children played with pebbles and sticks in the gutters, a couple of shawled women murmured at the steps. The cats’ meat man, a familiar figure, trundled his wheeled cart round the corner. Announcing itself with a pungent reek, his merchandise was condemned meat and chunks of ripe offal. It was intended for animals, but there were plenty of housewives in this neighbourhood who were glad to buy a little piece to boil up with half an onion and a handful of potato peelings to make a dinner for a hungry family.

Tossing away the apple core Devil stuck his hands into his pockets and passed on by. The intermediate street led in turn to a much wider thoroughfare. Here there were tall black buildings and glass shop frontages with names picked out in gilt lettering on their fascias. Painted enamel signs advertised tobacco and patent medicines, slate boards chalked with the prices of the day’s dinners hung outside working men’s eating-houses. It was noisy here, with street vendors shouting their wares over the hammering from building sites and the clip of horses’ hooves as loaded drays and hansom cabs and a crowded omnibus bound for Oxford Street rolled by. Pedestrians brushed past Devil, some of them glancing at his handsome face.

Let them stare, he always thought. What’s worth looking at must be worth seeing.

On the opposite corner of the street stood the Old Cinque Ports, a large public house. He hadn’t decided where he was heading today, but wherever it turned out to be would be fine because he felt lucky, and his instincts rarely let him down. In any case there was no hurry. A quick visit to the Ports would be a good way to get business started.

The heavy doors had twin panels of etched glass. Devil leaned on a brass handle and pushed open the door. It was the middle of an autumn afternoon but the lamps in the ornate saloon were blazing, and the bevels of the glass split the bright beams into little rainbows. As it always did, the interior of the pub reminded him of a place of worship. The cavernous ceiling arched overhead, polished brass and carved mahogany fittings glowed, and the altar – or in this case the long, sinuous curve of the bar – was the focus of all attention. The main differences were that it was warm in here and the place attracted a more interesting class of sinner, including numbers of women. One of them swayed towards Devil now. She had broad hips swathed in red sateen and a deep-cut bodice that revealed most of a pair of white breasts so heavily powdered that a pale fog rose off them as she moved. He didn’t think he had encountered her before, but she linked her bare arm in his as if they were old friends and guided him with a nudge of the hips towards a pair of stools. Devil had no objection. He liked sitting up here against the bar where he could admire the rows of bright bottles and their reflections in the painted glass, or flick a glance sideways at the drinkers’ profiles ranged on either side to assess them as potential threat or target. The stools were carved to fit a man’s rear, and when you parked yourself you felt that there was no finer place on earth to be than beneath the roof of this brewer’s temple, and no more promising day in your life than this very one.

‘I’ll have a gin, duck,’ the woman sighed in his ear. She had hopped up on to the stool next to his. Devil rapped on the marble bar top with a florin, and the barman came with a brief nod of greeting. The Old Cinque Ports was a busy place and Devil didn’t come here quite often enough for the man to try to use his name, which was how he preferred it. He ordered a glass for the woman and a pint of Bass for himself, and when the drinks came he put hers into her hand.

She had bad teeth which she tried to hide by keeping her lips drawn taut over her smile. Her hair lay thin and brittle over her grey scalp. She was several cuts above Annie Fowler’s wretched girls but most likely she lived in one corner of a room somewhere in the rookery from which he had just emerged, and probably struggled to find the shillings even for that. No doubt she had children to feed.

The woman lifted the glass and swallowed an eager gulp of gin. Her eyes met his, acknowledging that it was a hard life.

Devil leaned forward so their faces almost touched, like a kiss about to happen.

‘Now, get off with you and leave me alone.’

Her smile died, but she made no attempt to change his mind. She slid wearily from the stool and moved into the throng in search of another mark.

Devil sat back and made a survey of his companions. Several were familiar, none was of interest to him today. Sighing with satisfaction, he drank his beer and lit a cigarette. All was well. All would be well, at least. Coupled with the gift of an optimistic disposition he had the knack of finding contentment in small things. Current circumstances were unpromising, but this was a pleasant interval and he wouldn’t spoil it with dismal thoughts. He might be broke today – indeed, he was broke – but that didn’t mean that tomorrow would tell the same story. He wasn’t like the beggars and thieves who populated the Holborn alleys, immured in poverty and unable to help themselves, nor did he resemble the slightly better-off clerks and drovers and shop workers who gathered under the decorated ceilings of this public house as a break from their menial routines.

He was a man of talents.

Devil had finished his pint and was contemplating the possibility of another when a woman screamed, high and long. This was followed by a burst of shouting and cursing. There were the sounds of a scuffle and breaking glass and Devil idly turned to see two bloodied men in shirtsleeves swinging punches at each other. A woman staggered between them as she tried to haul one out of the fray. There was some jostling for a better view and a few shouts of encouragement from the onlookers, but fights weren’t at all uncommon in the Old Cinque Ports. The publican, a muscled fellow with a pugilist’s face, was already shouldering his way across the room to break it up. Devil was about to turn his back on the spectacle when he noticed the child. He was sliding between the drinkers, short as a midday shadow, dipping pockets.

The slut in the red dress began hauling at the other woman, shrieking, ‘Nellie, Nellie! Stop it now, afore ’e kills the both of you.’ Her purse was a leather pouch pinned at her waist and the child had obviously noted that the mouth of it gaped open. With the swirl of the crowd in the path of the approaching publican to his advantage, he pressed close up against the woman and his hand flashed faster than the eye could follow.

He was good, Devil noted.

Amusement, a dart of interest, or perhaps just a sense that he had treated the whore rudely despite having paid for her gin, made him jump from his stool. He leapt through the crowd and caught the boy as he reached the doors. Devil held him by the throat with one hand and grasped his surprisingly sturdy wrist with the other. The doors swung open and the publican booted the brawlers out into the street, followed by the handful of onlookers who wanted to jeer the fight to its end. Devil and his writhing captive stumbled out amongst them and Devil whipped off the child’s cloth cap so he could get a good look at his face. He stared in astonishment at the glare that met his.

The child wasn’t a boy at all but a man, his own age. There were furrows at the sides of his mouth and a jaw dark blue with stubble.

A pocket-picking dwarf. That was a fine thing.

The little man cocked an eyebrow.

‘I’ve seen you in the halls. You’re Devil Wix.’

He frowned. ‘Mr Wix to you. How much did you get?’ The dwarf tried to look offended but Devil snatched him off his feet and shook him until his pockets rattled. ‘How much?’

The feet in miniature boots swung viciously. Devil’s interest quickened. This was a lively little pickpocket.

‘Put me down.’

‘Give me the money you nabbed.’

‘Why should I? It’s not yours, is it? Unless she’s working for you.’

‘Do I look like a pimp?’

The dwarf put his head back, pretended to consider the question, and then shrugged. Devil almost laughed.

The combatants had exhausted their antagonism. One slumped on a doorstep and mopped his face with a rag. The other spat out blood and broken teeth while his whore clung to his arm and wailed. The woman in red stuck her fingers into her open purse and her mouth fell open in dismay. Devil and his captive were beginning to attract attention so he lowered the dwarf to the ground and roughly explored the small pockets with his free hand. He found a few coins – two shilling pieces, a threepenny bit and four pennies. He held out this haul to the drab and her mouth snapped shut again.

‘Don’t throw your money away,’ he advised pleasantly. She took the coins from him with a blink. Dragging his miniature companion by the arm, Devil marched out of the circle and made for the nearest corner. Another hundred yards brought them to a cabmen’s halt where a sign in the smeary window read: ‘Try our champion 4d. dinners’.

‘I feel like I’ve got a hole in me. Let’s eat,’ he said.

‘Got no money. You just stole it,’ the dwarf snarled.

‘I’ll play you for a dinner,’ Devil offered and the little man suddenly grinned, showing pointed teeth that made him look like a wolf backing into the undergrowth.

‘Right then,’ he agreed.

Inside the eating-house damp steam scented with boiled meat and potatoes rose around them and Devil sniffed appreciatively. A score of hungry cabmen clattered and guffawed as they shovelled up their dinners.

They took their seats at a table towards the back. The dwarf was perhaps three feet tall. He hauled himself into place with muscular arms and then settled on his haunches to bring his chin to the right height at the tabletop. He pushed his cap to the back of his head and Devil took a good look at him. His long-chinned but well-shaped face looked too large to be perched on his stunted body but his expression was alert and his hands were quite clean and cared for. He was no vagrant.

‘Cards or cups?’ he asked Devil, who only waved a hand to indicate indifference.

The dwarf took three tin cups out of an inner pocket and with a flourish placed a pea under the middle one. Devil was already bored. The dwarf shuffled the cups, elaborately feinting, and as soon as he sat back Devil pointed. The movements had been practised enough, but not so quick that he couldn’t follow them. He knew exactly where the pea was, and when the dwarf flipped the cup he wasn’t surprised to be proved right.

‘You pay,’ he yawned.

Slyly his companion lifted the second cup and then the third, and there were peas under those too. Devil grinned back at him. The little man had a sense of humour, and his touch wasn’t bad.

‘All right, my friend. You get a fourpenny dinner for your efforts.’

The cups and peas were tucked away and the dwarf rubbed his hands.

‘Are you going to tell me your name, since it seems you know mine already?’

‘You can call me Carlo.’ The dwarf didn’t sound as if he came from London, but neither did he sound as if this exotic label properly belonged to him. He was from the north of England, Devil guessed, although he was hazy about the geography of anywhere that lay beyond Bedford.

‘What kind of name is that?’

‘The one I have chosen,’ his new acquaintance snapped.

A pimply boy leaned over and slapped down cutlery, and at a sign from Devil followed it up with two swimming plates of mutton stew and mash.

‘Or is it a half serving for you?’ this person sneered at Carlo, making to scoop one plate away again. ‘It’s only tuppence for littl’uns.’

‘You put that down,’ Devil ordered. ‘And keep a civil tongue for customers.’

Devil and Carlo ate eagerly. The dwarf dispatched his plateful so quickly that he must have been ravenous.

‘Now,’ Devil said when Carlo belched and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What’s your story, Carlo from Manchester, or wherever it is and whoever you are? What brings you to London with your quick fingers? Richer pickings down here, is it?’

‘None of your business.’

‘I believe it’s at least four penn’orth of my business now.’

Carlo pursed his lips. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and unwrapped a toothpick from the folds. Applying this instrument to his teeth, he seemed to weigh Devil’s desire for information against his own requirements.

‘Morris’s Amazing Performing Midgets,’ he said at length.

‘Eh?’

‘I said …’

‘I heard. I’m asking you to elaborate.’

Carlo sighed with impatience, as if he could hardly believe that Devil wasn’t already familiar with the Midgets’ reputation.

‘You should know. I know you, and you’re not even first-rate.’ He pronounced it foost. Devil said nothing, amused by the dwarf’s high opinion of himself. ‘High-class act, it was. We didn’t just play the penny gaffs, although I’m not saying there wasn’t times when we were glad to. But we were booked in the better halls, and some private entertainments. We did song and dance, of course, and Sallie had a little piano and a miniature harp, very popular that was, especially with the ladies. Sam and me did a juggling turn, a set of acrobatics, well-rehearsed, top-notch costumes. But the meat and taters of the act was magic. Cards, coins, handkerchers. Miniature. And we ended it all up with a nice box trick. Very nice. All my own work, that was.’

The little man delivered the last snippet of information in a theatrical whisper, tufty eyebrows drawn together, his sharp eyes peering up at Devil. And as he must have known they would, his words made Devil sit up and pay attention.

‘All your own work?’ he repeated. ‘Inventor, are you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, well.’

Devil snapped his fingers at the serving boy who carried away the empty plates and brought them pint mugs of tea. Devil blew on his and took a swallow.

‘Was, you said. Was a high-class act?’

‘Nowt wrong with your ears.’

Devil reflected. He had heard on the circuit or perhaps read in the trades of a northern touring troupe of midgets. The name that suddenly came to him in this connection was Little Charlie Morris.

‘Charlie Morris, that’s who you are. What’s the business with Carlo?’

The dwarf sucked at his teeth to extract the last remnants of food and folded away the toothpick.

‘New start.’

‘I see.’ Devil understood that well enough. ‘What about your sister and her husband?’

He was almost sure, as fragmentary recollections came together, that Charlie or Carlo’s fellow performers had been these two members of his family.

The dwarf’s face flooded with such real sadness that Devil was sure it wasn’t part of an act, nor any attempt at gathering sympathy for mercenary reasons, but the base note of his being.

‘They passed away last year, within a week of each other.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Carlo jerked his head. He added, ‘In-flu-en-za,’ tapping the syllables between his teeth with such finality that Devil didn’t want to upset him by fishing for any further information. But naming the illness seemed to unlock the dwarf’s tongue.

‘My father was like me, my ma’s one of you although she’s no giant. Of us four children there’s two big ’uns and then my sister Sallie and me, and we two always knew we’d have to take care of ourselves because of being small. My dad was a singer in the taphouses. Used to stand him on the counter, they did, and he’d do a ballad and play the piccolo and pass his hat round.

‘Our two brothers went in for mill work but for us littl’uns the best we could have got was being sent to crawl under the looms to collect the waste, and our ma wouldn’t have that. So we were going to join our dad with the act. Make all our fortunes, he said. He trained us up and made us practise the routines, and when we didn’t work hard enough he’d thrash our hides raw with his belt. Poor old Sal used to howl. She was glad to marry her Sam to get away from home. Sam came from Oldham. Just him in the family was small, so it was lonely for him. He was sweet on Sal the minute he saw her. They’d been wed a year when our dad fell off the stage one night when he was corned and hit his head. He didn’t last long after that. I had Sam into the act gladly enough, even though he didn’t have the talent for it. Sal was the one out of the three of us who had the real stage quality. You should have seen her. Like a shining star her face was, under the lamps.

‘We did all right. Then one night Sam was ill with a fever and she was nursing him, and two days after that she was ill herself. Less than a week went by and they were both gone.’

Carlo drank his tea. His mouth tightened as if he regretted having confided so much.

Devil waited. This story would surely lead to a request for money, a bed for the night, a helping hand of some sort, and he was already wondering precisely how much he would be prepared to do for Carlo Morris if the circumstances happened to be right.

The dwarf added, ‘I can’t be a troupe of one, can I? Can’t work the box trick single-handed for a start.’

‘And so you’ve come down to the big city to look for some work in the halls. Juggling, acrobatics, and the magic, I think you said? Just doing some dipping for the practice, were you?’

Carlo smacked his hand on the table so violently that the mugs rattled.

‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a casual fallen on hard times. I don’t need to look for work. I’ve already got a job. And if I’m hungry today and an open pocket is held out to me in an alehouse, am I going to turn my back on it?’

‘I suppose not,’ Devil agreed. This attitude rather neatly matched his own. ‘You performed well enough. First time you’d tapped a purse, was it?’

This time it was Carlo who shrugged and flexed his strong fingers. He climbed down from the chair and straightened his cap on his head. ‘I’d not see Sallie go hungry. Or our ma for that matter, even though she’d slap me round the head quicker than cook me a dinner. Same with you, I daresay.’

‘I don’t have a sister or a mother. I wouldn’t take trouble for them even if I did.’

Carlo tipped his head to scowl up at Devil.

‘It’s not right to speak of family like that.’

‘I’m obliged to you for the sermon.’

Devil reached in his pocket for eightpence, and gave the money to the pimply youth. They made their way back out into the street. Now he had eaten, Carlo seemed relaxed, almost genial. He tucked his thumbs into his pockets and looked about him. Devil supposed that from his perspective the scenery was mostly composed of hansom wheels and women’s backsides.

‘I’m going that way,’ Carlo pointed. For a miniature man in a strange city he seemed remarkably at ease. ‘Why don’t you walk along? You can take a look at my new place of work. You’ll be interested in that.’

Devil wasn’t going anywhere in particular. ‘All right.’

They strolled through the crowds in silence imposed by the three-foot difference in height. They crossed a busy road, with Carlo picking his way ahead. He had to gather himself to spring across puddles that Devil stepped over without checking his stride. They skirted the web of alleys where Devil currently lodged and headed south into the yellow-grey murk of a fading afternoon.

‘Know where you’re going, do you?’ He addressed the button on top of the dwarf’s cap.

‘Do you take me for a fool?’

Devil was still amused. This dwarf was a lively little person.

After a longer interval of walking in silence Carlo led the way out into the Strand. By this time the lamps were lit, each yellow flare wreathing itself in a wan halo of mist. Devil regularly worked in the taverns and supper clubs lining the nearby streets and he had assumed Carlo was heading towards one of these. But the dwarf stopped only when they reached the Strand itself, at a gaunt building on the southern side that Devil had often passed and never troubled to look at. There was not much to be seen anyway because the front was largely obscured by boards, nailed into place with heavy beams to shield passers-by from bricks or chunks of stonework that might fall from the crumbling facade. Tufts of dried brown buddleia sprouted from the cracks in the lintels.

Carlo dipped into the alleyway that sloped along the building’s side. Somewhere further down lay the busy river; the reek of mud drifted up to them. There was a door in the side of the building, the cracked panels just visible in the fading light. The dwarf knocked, waited for a response, and when none came he put his small shoulder to it and pushed it open. The two men stepped into the damp, dark space within.

‘What’s this place?’ Devil asked.

‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’

Devil grabbed his collar. ‘Someone of your size might take more trouble to answer them.’

‘Listen,’ Carlo said.

There was music playing. It was tinny, so faint that the trilling was almost swallowed by the clammy air. They shuffled towards the sound and the glow of light spilling from another doorway.

In the centre of a hall that lay beyond, its shadowy depths hardly penetrated by a pair of gas lamps, a couple was dancing. The music was louder and sweeter here. It came from a musical box held in the lap of a solitary spectator, a very fat man in a heavy old coat. A silk scarf was knotted under his sequence of chins. When the mechanism wound down the fat man lifted the box and turned a handle until it started up again, and the couple went on waltzing. All three of them ignored the new arrivals.

Devil studied the dancers. Carlo swung on to a stool to give himself a better view.

The woman was very young, with long glossy hair that fell almost to her narrow waist. Her profile was serene, her lips slightly parted in a faint smile. Her partner was an attentive man of middle age, his face partly shielded by steel-rimmed spectacles. He danced with great concentration, his head bent so close to hers that his lips almost brushed the lustrous hair. The precision of his steps and his protective bearing suggested that she needed guidance in some manoeuvre more complicated or demanding than a waltz before an audience of one. Devil saw that the man’s shoes were rimmed with the mud of London streets, but the woman’s were pale satin and unmarked. She hadn’t walked here, or anywhere else, in those slippers.

The music stopped and the fat man turned the handle once again. Devil nodded to himself. The oddness of the scene, the dim light, the abundant hair had all momentarily confused him but now he knew what was happening here. He let his attention slide away.

They were in a derelict little theatre. As his eyes acclimatised he saw that it had been partly burned out. The space where the stage would once have been was a mess of charred wood and fallen beams, and the delicately painted walls of the auditorium had been spoiled with smoke. The ruins of seating had been thrown into the corners, and every surface, except for a circle in the centre that had been roughly swept for the dancers, was layered with soot. Yet even in its decayed state Devil could see that this was a harmonious space. A gallery extended its arms almost to the stage, from which it was separated only by two levels of little boxes with apron fronts that had once been lavishly gilded. The gallery was supported by slim pillars, blackened too but still intact. When he looked upwards he glimpsed the ruins of a once-magnificent plaster ceiling.

The last tinkling notes of the mechanical waltz died away, yet seemed to be still echoing in the intimate sounding-box of the hall.

Devil listened, all his senses heightened as a pulse ticked in his neck. What was this place?

‘Thank you, Herr Bayer.’ The fat man was barely smothering a yawn.

The dancers stopped but the man’s right hand still clasped his partner’s, and the fingers of his left rested lightly at her waist. Then he bowed to her and took one step back. As soon as she was released her white arms gracefully descended to her sides. She stood motionless, her eyes glittering. Her faint smile now seemed too fixed.

Devil had seen already that this was not a woman but an automaton.

A well-made thing, but still a thing.

‘She is beautiful, yes?’ Herr Bayer said.

The other shrugged.

Herr Bayer’s voice rose. ‘We have toured in France and Austria as well as in Switzerland. In Berlin we danced for a niece of the Empress.’

The fat man’s chins looked like warm wax melting into his scarf. ‘Tell me, what else does the doll do?’

Herr Bayer recoiled. ‘If you please. Her name is Lucie.’

‘What else does your Lucie do?’

Bayer guided her to a seat across the circle from the fat man. She moved in a stately glide, her head turning slightly on her slender neck as if to acknowledge her admirers. He dusted the chair seat with his handkerchief and she folded at the hip and the knee to adopt a sitting position. Bayer lifted one of her hands to his lips and kissed it.

‘As you see, Lucie stands and sits, walks and dances.’

‘I hear Mr Hoffman has a mechanical creature who plays chess. It will take on any opponent, and it usually wins.’

‘Hoffman’s Geraldo is hardly bigger than a child’s toy.’ Bayer swung on his heel and pointed at Carlo. This was the first acknowledgement from either man of their arrival. ‘And there is a person like him concealed in a box just behind its shoulder, directing the movement of the pieces.’

‘Davenport’s latest invention tells fortunes and reads minds.’

‘He uses a clumsy puppet, a scarecrow, hardly more than that. And the act is a common memory game. Pure trickery.’ Bayer almost spat. His Swiss-German accent grew heavier.

The fat man sighed. ‘It is all trickery. This is what we do.’

‘No.’

Bayer leapt to Lucie’s side. He put one arm round her smooth shoulder as if to defend her from insult. ‘This is no trick. She is what she is, a work of art. A miracle of precision, perfect in every movement. Look at her face, her hair, even her clothing.’

Devil strolled across the circle. ‘May I?’ He reached out to stroke Lucie’s head. The hair was human, but it felt lifeless under his hand. The automaton’s dress was lace and silks and velvet, but there was no breathing warmth within its rich folds. The face was exquisitely moulded and painted and utterly unmoving. He stepped back, faintly disgusted by the doll’s parody of womanhood.

Bayer said, ‘She is lovely, you see? Mr Grady, you will not find a better or more ambitious model to delight your audiences.’

The man smiled but an imploring note had entered his voice. Lucie might be dressed in the latest finery, Devil saw, but her partner’s clothes were worn and mended. The man was another itinerant performer, hungrily searching for a paying audience, just like Carlo and – indeed – himself. For a moment Devil was depressed to think how many such hopefuls there were in London, let alone elsewhere, but he didn’t allow the anxiety to take hold. He would succeed, because he would do anything and everything necessary to ensure that success. And the rest of them could go to hell. He returned to his contemplation of the theatre’s lovely ruin.

Grady put aside the musical box and wrote in a notebook.

‘Very well. Come back here in two weeks. We’ll be ready to open by then. I’ll try you out for a few performances, see whether the crowd takes to you.’

Bayer’s face brightened. He bowed to Grady and nodded to Carlo and Devil, but his proper attention was for Lucie. He wrapped a shawl round her shoulders and kissed the top of her head before bringing forward a brass-cornered trunk and undoing the clasps. The interior was padded with red plush and shaped to accommodate a female form. Bayer lifted the automaton in his arms and gently folded the doll into captivity. Then he hoisted the locked trunk on to a wheeled frame like a market porter’s, bowed again to Grady and took up the handles of the frame.

‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ he said from the doorway as he trundled Lucie away.

No one spoke for a moment. Then the fat man looked at his pocket watch.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ he said to Carlo. ‘What’s your name again?’

‘I told you. Carlo Boldoni,’ the dwarf replied, unblinking. ‘And as I said, direct from performing before the finest drawing-room audiences in Rome. And Paris.’

‘The finest taphouses in Macclesfield and Oldham, more like. Real name?’

‘In our world of magic and illusion what is real, Mr Grady?’

‘Pounds, shillings and pence,’ the fat man snapped, not greatly to Devil’s surprise. Grady looked like a man who would count all three most carefully. What were his plans, and what was the story of this ruined theatre?

Devil considered the possibilities, and the potential for himself, but said nothing.

‘Call yourself whatever you like,’ Grady went on. ‘I haven’t got all day to listen to you. Show me what you’ve got. And who is this?’ He pointed at Devil.

‘He is my assistant.’

Devil opened his mouth and closed it again. There was a time and place.

Carlo hurried into the shadows, then staggered into view once more bearing a pile of boxes and cloths.

‘Here,’ he muttered to Devil. Obligingly he unfolded the legs of a small table as Carlo shook out a green cloth covering. On the cloth he placed an opera hat and a wicker birdcage. He stood in front of his table and made a deep bow to Grady, then whipped a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow as if the effort of setting up his stall had brought on a sweat.

‘I haven’t got all day,’ the fat man scowled.

Carlo fanned himself with the handkerchief. His expression was so comical that Devil smiled. Then Carlo clapped his hands and the handkerchief vanished.

‘Dear me. Where has that gone? Can you tell me, sir?’

‘No,’ yawned Grady.

‘Then I will show you.’

Carlo produced the handkerchief from his pocket and clapped his hands. Once more it vanished, to be extracted from the pocket again a moment later.

‘You see, sir, how useful this is? Especially for a gentleman like you whose time is so valuable. You have only to take out your handkerchief, and never trouble yourself to put it away again.’

Devil knew how this old trick was done, because it was the first he had learned. But he had to acknowledge that it would have taken plenty of practice as well as natural skill to perform it so adroitly.

‘Continue, please,’ said Grady.

Carlo tipped the hat to show that it was empty but for the smooth lining, then pulled from it a knotted string of coloured silks. He whirled these round his head, drew a pair of scissors from the hat and snipped the silks into bright confetti that drifted to his feet. He scooped these fragments into his tiny fists, balled them up and threw them into the air, where they became whole handkerchiefs again. Devil was impressed. Improvising his role he snatched up the hat, bowed over it to Grady and gestured elaborately to acknowledge Carlo’s mastery. This gave him the opportunity to examine the hat, ingeniously constructed with a double interior.

Carlo lifted the birdcage and his sad, long-chinned face peered through the struts at Grady.

‘I have a sweet trick with the doves but I couldn’t leave my birds here with the rest of my old props, sir, could I? All I have to show you is their pretty cage.’

He wafted his fingers inside to demonstrate its emptiness and latched its door, dropped a cloth over the cage, marched twice around the table and snatched the cloth away again. Inside the cage was a crystal ball. Carlo extracted the ball and peered into the clear interior, rubbing his chin and muttering.

‘What have we here? Ah, this is a vision worth seeing, Mr Grady. We have a packed theatre, ladies and gentlemen applauding until their hands are ready to drop off, a heap of guineas, and handbills announcing the Great Carlo Boldoni in letters as high as himself.’

Grady stuck out his slab of a hand. Turning a little to one side Carlo blew on the ball and gave it a polish with his sleeve before handing it over. Inside the glass an orange now glowed.

‘Doesn’t look to me like even one guinea,’ Grady scowled.

‘You need magician’s eyesight, perhaps.’ Carlo retrieved his crystal ball, replaced it in the birdcage and covered it once again with the cloth. He settled the hat on his head and began to gather up his boxes. Almost as an afterthought he whipped off the cloth to reveal that the cage was empty once more.

Carlo tipped the comical hat to one side and thoughtfully scratched his cranium. Then he darted over to Grady, dipped a hand into the man’s coat pocket and brought out the orange. From the opposite pocket came a knife.

‘You look hungry,’ he said, slicing the orange into neat quarters and offering it to Grady.

‘Can’t you do a beefsteak?’ was the reply.

‘Not for a farthing less than five shillings a show.’

Grady gave a sour laugh. ‘For you and Her Majesty singing a duet, will that be?’

Carlo sucked one of the orange slices.

‘I have plenty more tricks. And some new ones, all my own, never performed on stage. You need Carlo Boldoni for your theatre opening, Mr Grady. What do you say?’

Devil returned to studying the graceful pillars and the sinuous curve of the gallery. He longed for a brighter light so he could see more.

Grady puffed. ‘I’ll think about it. You heard what I said to the fellow with the doll. The Palmyra will be ready to open in two weeks.’ He gestured to the gallery. ‘Go right through it, we will, get rid of all this old rubbish. Make it look like something.’

‘The Palmyra?’ Devil interrupted.

No, he was thinking. You won’t destroy this place and turn it into some penny gaff for vulgar music hall, not if I have anything to do with it.

Grady ignored him. To Carlo he said, ‘Your assistant doesn’t do a lot to earn his keep, does he? It was named the Palmyra, yes. That’s a town in Arabia, you know. Something like Babylon. What a name, eh? What’s wrong with the Gaiety, or the Palace of Varieties, a label with a bit of a promise in it? Built sixty years ago as a concert hall, it was. Never did any business, though, and the debts piled up until the poor devil who owned it went under. He died or he topped himself, one or the other, and there were decades of family disputes after that. In the end all the money went to chancery and they had to sell up.’

Grady tapped the side of his nose and Devil almost laughed out loud. The man was absurd. ‘The price was keen, I can tell you. Shall we just say that Jacko Grady is now the proud possessor? And under his management the old Palmyra will be the finest music hall in London.’

‘Don’t change the name,’ Devil said.

‘What?’

‘If I’d been clever enough to buy an opportunity like this, I’d keep the name. It’s different. It’s got class. More than you could say for the Gaiety.’

‘If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it. Which is about as likely as our friend here hitting his head on the Euston Arch.’ The fat man wheezed with pleasure at himself. ‘Who are you, anyway?’

‘I am Devil Wix.’

The dwarf hovered in Devil’s line of sight, gesturing to him to shut up.

‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?’

‘Why not? You are an impresario and I am a stage magician.’

Carlo gestured more urgently. Jacko Grady displayed no sign of interest and Devil thought, Six months. That’s about as long as you’ll last as the manager of your Palmyra. Money is the only thing that interests you.

Devil strolled to Carlo’s table and picked up the opera hat. He showed the empty interior to Grady, made a pass and extracted the dwarf’s scissors from their concealed place. Then he reached into his coat pocket and took out his own forcing pack of cards. He flexed his fingers, expertly shuffling so the cards danced and poured through his hands. He fanned them and offered the pack to Grady.

‘Any card. Memorise it and put it back.’

Grady yawned again, but did so. Devil shuffled again and then spun in a tight circle. He flung the cards in the air, brandished Carlo’s scissors and snipped clean through a card as it fell. Then he dropped to his knees and retrieved the cut halves. He held them up.

‘Ten of diamonds?’

Grady nodded. Devil gathered up the fallen cards and placed the cut card in the middle. He shuffled once more and held out the fanned pack. Grady’s thick forefinger hesitated, withdrew, hovered and then pointed. The card he chose was the ten of diamonds, made whole again.

The only sound that greeted this was Grady’s chair creaking under his weight.

Devil coaxed him, ‘We have some time between other engagements, Mr Boldoni and I. Try us out, Mr Grady, and we’ll put our new box trick on for your customers before anyone else in England sees it.’

Carlo’s signals grew more imperative but he held still as soon as Grady turned his glare on them.

‘What’s this new box trick?’

Devil improvised rapidly. ‘Ah, the Sphinx and the Pyramid? Mystery, comedy and Arabian glamour all in one playlet. Don’t tell me that’s not made for the Palmyra. There’s a lot of interest from other theatres. You’ll regret it if you let another management snitch us from under your very nose …’

Grady still spoke to Carlo. ‘All right. If I don’t see anyone better in the meantime I’ll put your act on when we open. Half a crown a performance, and you’ll play when I tell you to whether it suits you or not. That’s for you and your assistant, Satan or whatever he calls himself.’

Carlo ran forward and stood in front of Grady’s chair, legs apart and fists on his hips.

‘Five bob.’

Grady spat out a laugh that turned into a phlegmy cough. Carlo’s face turned livid with anger.

‘I said five bob. I won’t do it for less.’

Grady finished his coughing into a handkerchief and wiped his face. ‘Then don’t do it at all. It’s no trouble to me, I assure you.’

Devil smoothly interposed himself, dropping a reassuring hand on Carlo’s shoulder.

‘I am Mr Baldano’s manager as well as his assistant.’

‘I thought he said Boldoni.’

‘… And we are prepared to work for half a crown a show, with just one small stipulation.’

‘What might that be?’

‘For every show we appear in that plays to more than eighty per cent capacity, Boldoni and Wix take a percentage of the box office.’

‘What percentage?’

Devil hastily ran figures through his head. Bargaining against calculations of this sort had previously only taken place in his wilder fantasies, but his fertile imagination meant that was fully prepared.

‘Ten.’

Jacko Grady looked cunning. Clearly he thought that the likelihood of playing regularly to houses more than eighty per cent full, against all the competition from taverns and music halls in the nearby streets, was sufficiently remote as not to be worrisome.

‘All right.’

Carlo and Wix presented their hands and the fat man ungraciously shook.

‘I’ll bring a paper for you to sign. Just to be businesslike,’ Devil said. Grady only swore and told them to get out of his sight.

Darkness had fallen. Carlo and Devil stood with Carlo’s stage props and boxes in their arms as the tides of vehicles and pedestrians swept past along the Strand.

Carlo was boiling with fury. Devil thought the dwarf might be about to kick him and he tried not to laugh out loud.

The dwarf spluttered, ‘The Sphinx and the Pyramid? What blooming rubbish. What’s Grady going to say? We haven’t got any Arabian box trick.’

‘Then we’d better get one. You talk about your new trick, all your own work. We can dress that up, whatever it is, with a few frills. We’ll start tomorrow. Where’s your workshop?’

‘I haven’t got a damned workshop. You had to buy me my dinner. I haven’t even got anywhere to sleep tonight.’

Devil looked down at him. The dwarf was defiant.

‘You told me you had a job already, starting tomorrow?’

‘I knew I’d have one, once I’d shown him what I can do. I’m good. I’m the best. Compared with Carlo Boldoni you are just a tradesman.’

It was true. The Crystal Ball and the Orange had been something special, even though Jacko Grady was too stupid and too venal to have appreciated it.

‘So I’ll be your apprentice, as well as your manager.’

‘Boldoni and bloody Wix? What d’you mean by that? And all the gammon about ten per cent of nothing, which is nothing? I want five bob to go onstage. I don’t need you to manage me, thank you kindly.’

A lady and gentleman were lingering to watch the comedy of a dwarf squaring up to a full-grown man.

Devil stooped to bring his face closer to Carlo’s. He said gently, ‘You do need me. And you will have to trust me because I am putting my trust in you. That is how we shall have to do business from now on, my friend.’

‘I am not your friend, nor are you mine,’ the dwarf retorted.

Devil good-humouredly persisted. ‘I’ve also got a roof over my head, even though it’s not Buckingham Palace. You can come back there with me now. I’ve got bread and cheese, we’ll have a glass or two of stout, and we can start work on the box trick in the morning.’

Carlo’s fury faded. Devil could see that under his bravado the little man was exhausted, and had battled alone for long enough.

‘Come on,’ he coaxed.

Carlo said nothing. But after a moment he hoisted his boxes and began to trudge northwards, at Devil’s side.

Later that night Devil sat at the three-legged table in the corner of his attic room, an empty ale mug at his elbow. Apart from chests and boxes of props the only other furniture was a cupboard, two chairs, his bed and a row of wooden pegs for his clothes. It was cold and not too clean, but by the standards of this corner of London it wasn’t a bad lodging. The landlady was inclined to favour Devil, and he took full advantage of her partiality.

Devil was watching the dwarf as he slept, rolled up on the floor in a blanket with one of his prop bags for a pillow. He twitched like a dog in his dreams.

Devil wasn’t ready for sleep. He thought long and hard, tapping his thumbnail against his teeth as his mind worked.

TWO

The workshop belonged to a coffin maker. Coils of wood shavings had been roughly swept aside and the air was fugged with glue and varnish. Carlo stuck his hands on his hips and scowled about him.

‘Gives me the creeps, this place does.’

Devil raised his eyebrows. ‘We can’t be choosy, my friend. And contrary to your dainty feelings it strikes me as perfect for working up a box trick. Shall we begin?’

‘Don’t try to tell me we haven’t got all night,’ Carlo grumbled. The workshop’s owner had gone off at seven o’clock, warning them that he would be back again first thing in the morning by which time they were to be cleared out, and not to disturb any of his handiwork in the meantime. ‘I’m going to eat a bite first.’

With this he settled himself on the coffin maker’s bench, unwrapped a square of cloth, and tore into a hunk of bread laid with cold mutton. With difficulty, Devil held his tongue. After just two days of Carlo’s company he knew not only that the dwarf’s small body could absorb surprising quantities of food, but that he was always to be the one who paid for it. The end would be worth the outlay, he reassured himself. If the intimations he had already picked up about Carlo’s box trick turned out to be correct.

Jacko Grady was not so stupid as not to have an inkling of the potential too, because without overmuch protest he had signed two copies of the contract prepared by Devil. Ten per cent of box office returns, on every house of more than eighty per cent capacity.

The arithmetic ran in Devil’s head like a ribbon of gold.

Once the dwarf had finished his meal, they turned to the collection of materials assembled to Carlo’s precise instructions and eventual approval. As well as the borrowing of a handcart and the negotiating with sawyers and metal smiths, the procuring of everything had obliged Devil to use almost the last of the sovereigns he kept hidden under the floorboards and in various other niches in his lodgings. The bribe to the coffin maker for night-time use of his premises had taken most of what was left.

‘This had better be a dazzler,’ he muttered.

To answer him Carlo rummaged in one of his bags and produced an armful of metal. This he assembled to make a knife with a blade as long as himself. He whipped the air with it, then drove the point into the rough floorboards before leaning on the handle to demonstrate the weapon’s strength and flexibility.

‘In my costume as whoever you please, Pharaoh perhaps, or the Medusa, or Milor’ the Frenchie Duke – it don’t matter – I will stand, so,’ said the dwarf, taking up his position in what might be the centre of the stage. ‘For whatever reason it is, you will cut off my head. It will drop into a basket, most like, and my body will fall to the ground.’

‘Good,’ Devil replied. ‘Is that all?’

Carlo glared. ‘Wait, can’t you? My headless torso remains. Onstage with us we’ll have the cabinet, ornate as you like, on four legs.’

‘Or on what appears to be four sturdy legs?’

‘Yes, yes. You know what the mirrors are for.’

‘And what I paid for them,’ Devil added.

‘Don’t you ever shut up? You will cross the stage to open the cabinet and within it will appear …’

‘Your severed head. Floating in mid-air, I assume?’

‘Aye. So we talk. There’ll likely be some pact, and your end of the bargain will be to put my head back.’

‘So I close the cabinet doors.’

‘You do. There’s the mumbo jumbo and the lights flash. In an eye-blink there is my living, speaking head secure on my neck again.’

‘I hold the basket up, empty except for the horrible bloodstains.’

The dwarf yawned. Devil tapped his teeth with his thumbnail.

‘No, wait … I’ve got it. A river of gold pours out of the basket. It’s alchemy, that’s what the trick is. It’s all about the philosopher’s secret.’

‘Theatricals are your department,’ Carlo shrugged.

The two men eyed each other. Devil had been optimistic in his first definition of their relationship. In fact their mutual mistrust was not much diminished by the two days and a night they had been obliged to spend together, nor even by the strange liking that crept up between them. Neither would have cared to admit to this last. Carlo stuck his jaw out while Devil pondered the mechanics.

‘It’s not a new illusion. Monsieur Robin has something similar.’

‘It’s still a sweet trick, and it can be as new as tomorrow if we choose to make it that way.’

This was true. Devil well knew that apart from endless practice it was audacity, force of personality and the glamour of the stage itself that created magic out of mere mechanics. His thoughts ran ahead.

‘As it happens, I know a wax modeller who is employed by the Baker Street Bazaar.’ He strode across to their cache of materials and held up two short ends of deal planking. ‘Show me,’ he ordered.

Carlo returned to a squatting position on the coffin maker’s bench and indicated that Devil was to hold the boards up to his neck. The little man’s head protruded between them as he settled on his muscular haunches. Then he folded his limbs. His knees splayed to the sides and his ankles crossed as he brought his feet towards his chin. His short spine telescoped further, his shoulders rose towards his ears as his arms wrapped round his torso. Devil had to lower the boards, and lower them again as Carlo shrank into a ball of muscle.

‘That’s good. That’s really very good,’ he said. He was impressed. The dwarf had compressed his body into a space that seemed hardly more than a foot square.

‘Watch me,’ Carlo snapped. He breathed in deeply, exhaled, and reduced himself by another inch in all directions.

‘Stop,’ Devil laughed. ‘I am afraid that you will vanish altogether. Can you still speak and move your head?’

‘Of course.’

The dwarf’s head, which was not undersized, rotated freely above the boards. There was no sign of physical strain in his face and his voice was as smooth as cream.

The ribbon of gold in Devil’s head looped and tied itself off into a giant bow.

He put the boards aside and silently admired the way that Carlo unfolded his limbs before stretching his little body upright again.

‘There is just one detail.’

Carlo tipped his head. ‘What’s that?’

‘Your size.’

‘What? My size is our money.’

‘It will provide a significant contribution to our funds, I agree. I acknowledge that. My skills as an actor, as the master magician who will conjure your smallness, will be another invaluable element. I am also our financial negotiator, as you know.’

‘Hah,’ sniffed Carlo.

‘And all my experience dictates that your stature should be our stage secret.’

‘What do you mean by that? I am not ashamed. I want the world to know who I am, Carlo Boldoni, straight from performing before the crowned heads of …’

‘Quite,’ Devil said. ‘I am only suggesting that to reveal your stature to the public would be to take away some of the intrigue of the illusion.’

There was a silence. Carlo’s personal vanity and ambition strained visibly.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘For this trick, to appear onstage as a full-sized man. Is there perhaps a way you can do that?’

‘Hah,’ Carlo sniffed again. He made a return to his baggage and this time brought out a pair of wooden struts with shaped foot-pieces at either end. Devil watched with interest as he sank to fit these stilts to his boots, then used Devil’s long leg as a prop to haul himself upright again. Their eyes met almost on a level.

‘Walk,’ Devil ordered.

The stilt-walk was well practised, tinged with swagger, like everything Carlo did.

‘That’s good. Very good,’ Devil said again. ‘You could use those to step out in the world like a normal man, couldn’t you?’

Carlo’s face went dark. ‘I am a normal man. My body is the same as yours, bar its length. My feelings are the same as yours and all, except I’m too mannerly to tell you that you’re an ignorant numpty. Until you force me to do so, that is.’

Devil kept a straight face. ‘I am very sorry, and you are quite right. I was rude and tactless. Will you forgive me?’

He held out his hand and after only a moment’s hesitation the dwarf extended his own and they shook. This was a significant moment and they both chose to ignore it.

‘So I get a costume?’ Carlo persisted.

‘Allow me time to work out the details of our drama, and we will have the finest costume in London sewn for you.’

Then Devil unbuttoned his waistcoat and put it aside before rolling up his shirtsleeves. From the heap of timbers he selected and held up one pair of cheap chair legs, roughly turned and bristling with splinters. He was no master carpenter, but he had built plenty of stage devices in the past. This one would have to be the best of them.

‘Let’s get to work,’ he said.

The lantern light threw up their shadows, large and small, against the dirty wall. For the rest of the night the coffin maker’s workshop was as loud with the sounds of sawing and hammering as during the daylight hours.

Dawn was breaking when the two men finally emerged into the street. Carlo was grey with fatigue, rubbing his face and stretching to ease his aching body. Devil looked as alert and handsome as he had done before their night’s work started.

‘I will need a coffin myself if I don’t get some rest,’ Carlo grumbled. ‘I’m going back to your place for a sleep.’

‘I shall see you later,’ Devil replied.

He walked through the tiny alleys and the crowded courts of the area that housed timber merchants, furniture makers, metalworkers, printers and block makers, and emerged into Clerkenwell Road. The sky lightened from grey to pearl and the cobbles underfoot glistened with damp. Birdsong rose from the eaves of the houses and the trees in St John’s Square, competing with the rumble of carters’ wheels. Devil walked slowly, savouring the bite of the chill air and the smell of frying kidneys that drifted from an open window. In Farringdon Road the omnibuses were already crowded and a steady stream of black-coated clerks flowed out of the railway station. Devil was washed along in the tide of men, passing under the florid ironwork of the new viaduct and on down to Ludgate Circus. When he glanced up Ludgate Hill he saw that the dome of St Paul’s was rinsed in the glowing light of the rising sun. He stopped to admire the view. It didn’t often occur to him that the city was beautiful. In general he thought it was the opposite but today, with the satisfaction of a good night’s work completed and the gold ribbon decorating his dreams, he saw its richness and promise reflected in all the domes and roofs and sun-gilded windows.

He was whistling with satisfaction as he paced along the Strand and reached the Palmyra theatre at last.

The frontage looked the same, still boarded up and whiskered with buddleia stalks. Down the side alley, however, there was a change. A heavy new door had been fitted, secured with iron hinges and locks. For good measure a padlock and chain were attached to a massive bolt. That was all good. The threshold and step were spread with sawdust. Devil stooped down and rubbed the damp grains between his fingers. There was work being undertaken here, just as there was at the coffin maker’s. Then, not hoping for anything, he put his shoulder to the door and pushed. It didn’t yield even by a fraction. He resorted to thumping on the door panels but no response came except from a knot of urchins looking out for trouble at the street corner.

‘Ain’t nobody in, mister,’ they jeered. ‘Forgot yer key, did yer?’

They raced away as soon as Devil headed for them. He walked along the flank of the building, running his fingertips over the flaking paint and crumbling stonework. The old theatre seemed to breathe in response to his touch.

‘Here I am,’ he muttered to it. ‘And we’ll see what we shall see, eh?’

Recalling the dim interior, he wanted nothing more than to explore the place properly, in daylight, and without the vulgar insistence of Jacko Grady at his shoulder. For one thing, the box trick he and Carlo had in mind would require trapdoors, and other installations beneath whatever kind of stage would replace the ruined one. He needed to inspect the whole area and take measurements for the construction of his cabinet. Clearly, though, this wasn’t going to happen today. He bestowed a last touch on one of the fluted pilasters flanking the ruined front doors, and looked upwards to the little cupola surmounting the building. He touched the brim of his bowler.

‘See you later.’ He smiled almost tenderly.

He had it in his mind to pay a visit to the wax modeller, who happened to be one of the very few of his acquaintances with any knowledge of the days before Devil Wix, when he had been Hector Crumhall. But this craftsman’s place of work was in Camden Town, a long way north of the Strand. Devil thought he would go home to his lodging first and snatch an hour’s sleep, if that were to prove possible against the racket of Carlo’s snoring.

The series of alleys, growing ever narrower, twistier and more foetid as they led towards the rookery, obliterated all Devil’s benign thoughts regarding the city’s early-morning loveliness. He passed Annie Fowler, already seated in her doorway with a cup of gin, but he ignored her. The low door of the house where he lodged creaked open and Devil stepped inside. A heavy figure immediately placed itself in front of him.

‘Good morning, Mrs Hayes,’ Devil greeted his landlady. ‘It’s a fine day.’

Mrs Hayes folded her arms. ‘It may well be. For those who don’t have to see a blasted midget creeping up and down their stairs, in and out at all hours. What’s that creature doing in my house?’

‘He is my associate, Carlo Boldoni the famous theatre performer, until recently a member of Morris’s Amazing Performing Midgets, no less, and fresh from performing before the crowned heads of Europe …’

She came one step closer to him. ‘Do I care who he is? I can tell you straight off, I do not. He is a dwarf and I find he’s sleeping under my roof without so much as a handshake. I don’t care for him. This is a respectable house.’

‘It is a temporary arrangement, Mrs Hayes. You see, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go at present and I am a kind-hearted fellow. I suffer for my kindness, but I hope you will understand.’ Devil’s voice grew softer. ‘I believe you will, Maria, of all women. You have shown such particular kindness to me.’

Maria Hayes hesitated. She was a large woman in her forties with some of the prettiness of her youth still in her face, her black hair unpinned, and the white folds of her body unconfined by stays. Devil might have assumed she had only just stepped out of her bed, had he not known that she could be encountered in a similar state of undress at any hour of the day. She raised a hand and brushed a stray coil of hair from her flushed cheek.

‘I have, Mr Wix. I have been as kind as I could be.’

Devil lifted a matching coil of hair from the opposite cheek. They were already standing close together and the confined space of the vestibule offered no latitude. Devil used his elbow to nudge open the door of the landlady’s room. It was not a very much more spacious resort. One glance was enough to reveal that Mr Hayes was absent, as usual, nor was there any sign of the slow-witted son of the house.

Maria’s mouth was only six inches from his. He leaned down to close the distance. Her lips obligingly parted.

After the kiss Devil ran his hands over her breasts. He put his mouth to her ear.

‘Tell me, is My Lady Laycock at home today?’

Maria smirked. ‘I’ll have to see if Her Ladyship is receiving visitors this morning.’

‘Won’t you tell her Mr Devil Wix is calling?’

Maria grasped his wrist and yanked him over the threshold. Devil kicked the door shut and she slid the bolt behind them. He put his arms round her and they half waltzed to the stuffy alcove with the bed concealed behind a curtain. The sheets were far from clean and the bolster leaked feathers from its case of greasy ticking. Devil untied the strings of Maria’s chemise and the thought of the golden ribbon came happily into his mind again. His landlady pressed herself against him and her tongue sought his.

‘I find she is at home, and waiting for you,’ she murmured. Her fingers were tugging at his shirt buttons, then her hand moved downwards. ‘It’s a good name for you, wherever you got it. Devil by nature as well, aren’t you?’

Cheerfully Devil tipped her backwards on to the bed and pulled up her grubby petticoat. He got busy, at the same time tasting the sweat of her neck and the rankness of her black hair.

Afterwards they lay on the mattress with a coil of bedding twisted round them. Maria was an energetic performer and Devil hadn’t slept for twenty-four hours. His eyelids were so heavy that he was wondering how he was going to get up the stairs to his own bed. A sudden thumping on the door jolted him upright quickly enough, however. Groaning at the thought of Mr Hayes on the threshold he pulled his clothing together. Maria went undressed to the tiny window and stuck her head out.

‘Stop that racket. Get down to Ransome’s and bring me back a jug of porter,’ she yelled. From this exchange Devil understood that it was her son at the door, not the husband. When she pulled herself back into the room they grinned at each other.

‘You’ll wet your whistle?’ Maria asked.

Devil took her reddened hands and kissed the knuckles of each.

‘I have to go to work, my lovely girl.’

The delighted smile she gave him was almost shy, and her blush did make her look girlish. Devil slid out of the room and softly closed the door before she could mention the dwarf again. Aching for rest he climbed the bare flights of stairs, past doorways to rooms hardly larger than cupboards, which nevertheless housed families of lodgers, until he reached the attic. As he had expected he found Carlo lying on his makeshift bed, fast asleep and snoring like an engine. Devil kicked him as he stepped past, but this had no effect at all. Ten minutes later, his own snores provided a counterpoint.

In the two weeks that followed Devil worked harder than he had ever done, and he had laboured for long, bitter hours on plenty of occasions before this. Nights with Carlo at the coffin maker’s followed on from late evenings of performing his own act at whichever of the taphouses or small halls would offer him a booking. He took the money wherever he could get it. One evening he arrived at the workshop still in his stage costume, such was his eagerness to resume work on the cabinet trick. Carlo eyed him as he discarded his greatcoat.

‘What’s this?’ the dwarf sniggered.

Devil preened. He wore a suit of red cloth, cut to fit so snugly that it might have been a second skin.

‘Ah, my performance costume? It is for a trick called the Infernal Flames. Tonight at Prewett’s they were begging for more.’ This was not strictly true, but Devil was always good at reinterpreting reality in his own favour. ‘But for our grand opening at the Palmyra we will do far better than Jacko Grady has bargained for.’

They turned to their work. The cabinet interior was empty except for a double shelf. Tonight’s work was to line all the inside surfaces with a seamless layer of jet-black velvet. Devil undid a draper’s brown-paper package and smoothed a bolt of fabric on a swept circle of floor. He took a tailor’s tape and called out the measurements in feet and inches and Carlo pencilled them on a sheet of paper. Each measurement was taken twice, to ensure accuracy. The velvet had been expensive to buy and none of Devil’s techniques of persuasion had achieved even a pennyworth of discount. Carlo set to with a pair of shears. He was a dextrous worker and the first neat rectangle was soon cut to the precise size. Devil had applied brush and glue to the cabinet wall and with some cursing and arguing they succeeded in sticking the light-absorbing material in place.

Halfway through the task they stood back to gauge the effect. The finished walls of the box seemed to melt into black space. Even Carlo the perfectionist was pleased.

‘I have some more good news,’ Devil announced. ‘Tomorrow your head will be ready. I am to collect it after we leave here.’

‘At last. So we must begin to work up the beheading. I’ll be needing a suit of tall clothing.’

Devil sighed. There was a deal of investing to be done before any return could be hoped for, but still his confidence held.

Devil and Carlo together had visited the wax-modelling studio of Mr Jasper Button in Camden Town, and Carlo had made his way there alone on three subsequent occasions. He had sat patient and motionless on a stool, with the smells of warm wax and linseed oil and turpentine all round him, while the modeller built up sub-layers and then sculpted pellets of wax over a wire frame. On the last visit the modeller had sorted through a basket filled with plaited hanks of cut human hair, holding up one specimen after another next to Carlo’s head and muttering to himself as he searched for the best match. He ran his fingers through the dwarf’s abundant locks and pulled at the sprouting tufts of his eyebrows.

‘Where does it all come from?’ Carlo had asked.

‘Plenty of people hereabouts are glad to sell the hair off their heads for a shilling or two.’ Jasper held up a long plait of rich copper-gold. ‘This one belonged to a woman who knew that all her youth and loveliness shone out of it, but the day came when she had nothing else to sell. Her hair was just the start of it.’ He dropped the plait into the basket again.

‘If this was quality work, I’d be using human hair on you. See? This is the closest for colour and texture.’ He brandished a salt-and-pepper bunch next to the dwarf’s face and Carlo twisted away from it in disgust. ‘Devil Wix won’t pay for that, of course. You and your model will be making do with an identical pair of horsehair wigs. What are you supposed to be? The good philosopher, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll be generous to you both and give you your eyebrows in real hair.’

Carlo stared at the egg-bald wax head on its stand. The coffin maker’s was creepy enough, but this shadowy place deep in the wrecked streets surrounding the railway yards more than matched it. There was a box containing dozens of glass eyes on the floor at his feet, all unwinking and all fixed on him.

‘You and Wix know each other from back when?’

The other held up a loop of wire, measuring by eye the breadth of skin between Carlo’s brows.

‘A long time.’

No more was forthcoming.

Without meeting the gaze of the glass eyes Carlo tried another topic on the modeller. ‘Odd sort of a job you do, wouldn’t you say?’

Jasper gave him a contemptuous glance. ‘My waxwork of Miss Nellie Bromley in Trial by Jury is the favourite figure in the Baker Street exhibition. I’d not call my artistic work odd. Not by comparison with your own, for example.’

Carlo scowled but said nothing. After that they had posed and modelled in silence.

After a long night at the coffin maker’s Devil walked up from Holborn to Euston and thence along the sooty roads that led to Camden Town. All along the way rough tent encampments lay beside the railway lines and under the arches and bridges. The men, women and children who existed here were black-faced and their ragged clothes were black, as were the heaps of brick rubble and even the dead leaves hanging on the few weak trees. Black smoke billowed from cooking fires and smouldering brick kilns, and the occasional threatening figure lurched out of this murk and mumbled at him. By shrinking inwardly Devil made himself seem smaller and darker too, and he passed through these places without difficulty.

By the time he rattled the latch of the studio door Jasper Button was already at work.

‘Jas? You there?’

‘Where else would I be?’

‘I’d say anywhere you could be, if only you had the choice.’

Jasper ignored him. The streets outside might be warrens of decrepit houses and belching chimneys and gaunt sheds but his studio was snug enough. A blanket hung over the doorway to keep in the warmth, there was a coal fire in a narrow little grate and a black kettle on the hob.

‘You want some tea?’

‘You don’t have anything stronger?’

It was a question that didn’t expect an answer. Jasper Button never touched a drop, and given what had happened to his mother and father Devil understood why not. The modeller warmed an earthenware teapot and lifted the kettle using a knitted potholder.

Devil was stalking the bald wax head, examining it from every angle.

‘What do you think?’ Jasper was eager for Devil’s approval. More than a decade ago, the two of them had played together up in the green fields and lanes surrounding the village of Stanmore. Devil had been the ringleader in those days, the admired and feared chief of a band of boys who had in common their rebelliousness and their longing for first-hand experience of the world they could see from the top of Stanmore Hill.

Devil pretended to consider. ‘I think you have achieved a reasonable likeness.’

‘Go to hell. The head’s not for sale, then.’

‘Poor Jas. What will you do with it, in that case?’

‘I’ll exhibit it. There’s always an audience in the Chamber of Horrors.’

‘True enough. Let’s have a look.’

Jasper lifted the head off the stand and turned it upside down to reveal a meticulously gory cross-section of severed bone, muscle and artery. Devil whistled.

‘I say. That’s very pretty. Is that what it really looks like?’

‘Like enough,’ Jasper said brusquely. ‘Enough to satisfy your tavern audiences, at any rate. If I decide to let you have it, that is. I rather liked your midget friend, so I might just keep his likeness beside me for sentimental reasons.’

‘I expect you will feel even more sentimental about two sovereigns, won’t you?’ He put two fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat where the naked end of his watch chain rested.

‘Let’s see the colour of them,’ Jasper insisted, knowing his friend too well.

The money and the model were exchanged and Devil stowed the waxen version of Carlo in a bag with his scarlet stage costume. Once the transaction was complete he was able to give due praise.

‘You’re a magician, Jas, you know, in your own way. Not in my league of course, but it’s a decent skill. Are you going to pour that tea or leave it to stew?’

Jasper passed him a cup and they settled beside the fire.

Once, long ago, the two of them had been amongst a crowd of gaping children who had watched the performance of a few magic tricks in a painted canvas booth set up by a travelling conjuror on the village square. The man had been more of a tramp than a real performer, and the sleights as Devil now recalled them had been shabby and fumbling. But still, here was a man who could make a white rat appear from a folded pocket handkerchief and who could grasp a shilling out of blue air. They hadn’t been there an instant before, but the rat and the shilling were definitely real. He could still remember how the sleek warmth of the animal had filled his hands when the conjuror asked him to mind it for him, and he could taste the coin’s metal between his teeth when he had tested it with a bite. How had such solid things appeared from nowhere? What strange dimensions existed beyond the range of his limited understanding?

Everything he had known up to that point had been narrow, painful, humdrum, and devoid of mystery. There was his own confined world and then there was beyond, somewhere out of reach, where great events took place. Yet here he was in the centre of the ordinary with the extraordinary somehow taking place right in front of him. To witness the magic had been his first experience of wonder, and it had filled his childish heart with yearning.

All around him his friends and their brothers and sisters were shouting and jeering and trying to grab the rat or the shilling but Devil was silent. All he wanted was to see more magic, to be further amazed and transported, and at the same time he was envious. Why was it not given to him to create wonder in the same way? What a gift that must be, he thought, as he gazed at the grog-faced man in the canvas booth with his tattered string of silks and his hands that shook so much he dropped his shilling, to the great amusement of the crowd.

Ten-year-old Hector Crumhall hardly knew how, but he understood that the bestowal of wonder was the ticket that was going to carry him out of Stanmore.

At the end of the scrappy show a few halfpennies and pennies landed in the man’s hat. He gathered them up and peered at the skinny black-haired boy waiting at the edge of the booth.

‘Mister? Can I do that with the rat?’

The man coughed and spat a thick bolus into the grass at his feet. The wooden struts came down and the canvas with its daubed stars and moons and strange symbols was strapped into a package ready to be hoisted on the traveller’s back.

‘Only if you learn the craft, boy.’

‘How? How can I learn?’

‘Ah, that’d be difficult enough. I’d say you’d have to find a ’prentice master in the magic trade.’

The man was ready to leave and Devil looked past him down the lane that led southwards to London. The path through a hollow way beneath oak trees and out across the fields had never seemed so enticing.

He begged, ‘Take me with you. If you teach me how to do those things like you did I’ll carry your bag for you, mister.’

The man didn’t even smile. Devil was surprised that his offer wasn’t instantly taken up. He thought he would make a fine apprentice.

‘You stay here with your ma and pa. You don’t want to be getting yourself a life like mine.’

With that he picked up the last of his belongings and trudged away. Devil stood and watched until the man turned the corner. His body twitched with longing to follow. For weeks afterwards he daydreamed about magic and regretted his failure of courage when the moment of opportunity had presented itself.

Devil’s father was the village schoolmaster, a man who had just enough education to be aware of how much he did not know. Mr Crumhall’s only child had been intended for the Church, but Hector was barely eight years old before it became clear that he was an unsuitable candidate for the cloth. He stole apples, raided the dairy, bullied children who were bigger than himself, and to his father’s constant disapproval only paid attention to what interested him. He was a slow pupil even in the undistinguished setting of the village school. After the travelling performer’s visit, what did interest him was the craft and performance of magic. He pestered his father for information. One of the mysteries that intrigued him was the difference between magic and conjuring.

‘Why are there two names?’

‘Conjuring is tricks. Packs of cards, vanishing handkerchiefs, deceptions of the eye for fools with money to throw away on tawdry entertainments.’

‘What is magic, then?’

He wanted his father to acknowledge the transport of wonder, and to give him permission to immerse himself in it.

‘There is no such thing as magic, Hector. There is only truth, and God shows us the way of that.’ Mr Crumhall was a quietly devout man.

‘What is alchemy?’

His mother glanced up from her darning and frowned at him, and his father became impatient. ‘Only charlatans ever believed in such a thing. There is no process that can turn base metal into gold, or make any such transformation, and all the business of mumbo jumbo associated with it is nothing more than the devil’s work.’

The child thought he had never heard anything so fascinating, and that the devil’s work sounded a good deal more interesting than anything he was required to do, in the schoolroom or out of it.

‘Why?’

‘Creation is the Lord’s, Hector.’

Hector continued to talk about magic, and its lowly cousin conjuring (as he thought of it) so incessantly that Mrs Hargreaves of Park House, for whom Mrs Crumhall did some sewing, presented him with a book from her late husband’s library. It was small, with worn red covers and endpapers printed with signs and symbols that thrillingly reminded him of the traveller’s booth. The title was The Secrets of Conjuring Revealed, by Professor Weissman. Hector raced up to his bedroom with this treasure and began to read.

At first he was disappointed. The print was tiny, there were far too many long words like instantaneous combustion and proscenium, and whilst there were a few intriguing engravings of disembodied heads floating in mid-air, quite a lot of the illustrations were tedious geometrical diagrams showing dotted lines diverging from a sketched representation of a human eye. He persevered, painstakingly consulting the dictionary on his father’s bookshelf, only to be further disappointed because most of the secrets that the Professor revealed employed special apparatus – hollow coins, wires as fine as human hair, or something called an electro-magnet. There was one effect, however, that only called for a handkerchief, a piece of string and a coat sleeve, all of which items happened to be available. While his mother’s back was turned he took a needle and a piece of thread from her workbox and stitched the end of the string to the centre of the handkerchief. This in itself was difficult enough, resulting in a blood-blotched cotton square and a frayed piece of string.

Next he memorised the sequence of movements described in the book and began to practise bending and straightening his arms and making a sharp clap of the hands. There was a framed looking glass on his mother’s washstand, and he stood in front of this for hours.

Then at last, for an audience consisting of Jasper Button, Jasper’s two sickly sisters and poor Gabe who didn’t understand much, he performed for the first time the Handkerchief which Vanishes in the Hand.

Gabe’s jaw fell open in astonishment when the handkerchief disappeared, and he shouted out in his clogged voice. ‘Gone! Gone!’

The Button girls’ shrivelled faces shone with unaccustomed pleasure and even Jasper was deeply impressed.

‘How did you do that?’

‘By magic,’ Devil said. He had never experienced such power, or so much pleasure in exercising it. And his appetite grew. He studied whatever books he could lay his hands on and practised harder. Every penny that came his way he spent on apparatus.

A bad day came when Devil turned fourteen. His mother had died the year before, from one of her fits of breathlessness in which her face turned grey and then dark blue as she struggled for air. The schoolhouse was cold and comfortless without a woman in it and his father grew silent and morose and even more exasperated by his son’s behaviour.

‘Why can’t you follow Jasper’s example?’ he would demand.

Devil shrugged, trying to pretend he didn’t care that he wasn’t clever in the way his father would have liked him to be.

Jasper was Mr Crumhall’s favourite pupil by far. He had been a ready learner for as long as he was able to come to school, and he knew how to apply himself. He was working for a saddler now but he was also developing into a promising artist. There was never any money for any of the Button children because their mother and father needed to drink more than they were able to earn and pay for, but Mrs Hargreaves and the rector’s wife and a few others helped the boy out with paper and pencils. There was even talk of him attending a school of art.

‘I am not him, I am me,’ Devil replied.

‘More’s the pity,’ Mr Crumhall snapped.

Fury curled up in Devil like a flame licking the corner of a document. He leapt up and kicked his chair aside so it crashed on the flagged floor.

‘I’ll show you. I’ll be a great man.’

‘Greatness doesn’t arrive by magic, Hector. You won’t do it by shuffling playing cards and waiting to be fed.’

Anger was always Devil’s stalker.

It burst out of him now in a great wave and the force of it swept him across the room to where his father was seated. His hands closed around his father’s throat and he squeezed.

He didn’t keep up the pressure for more than two or three seconds before the appalled recognition of what he was doing came over him. He realised that he was shouting, ugly words that were choked with the piled-up frustration of his village days and unvoiced grief for his mother. His hands dropped to his sides and he sprang backwards, shaking from head to foot as if he had a fever. Mr Crumhall had a temper that matched his son’s. He leapt up and hit the boy across the face, a blow that sent Devil flying backwards against the kitchen dresser and knocked three plates to the floor where they smashed into flowered shards.

Father and son faced each other, panting and appalled.

‘Get out of my house.’

‘I wouldn’t stay here to save my life.’

Taking nothing but his tiny library of magic books Devil left the schoolhouse. That night he spent shivering and trying to sleep on the hay stacked in a barn. The next day Jasper and one of his sisters slipped in to find him, bringing some bread and apples which Devil crammed into his mouth like a starving man. Jasper advised him to go home and tell his father that he was sorry but he refused even to consider the possibility.

‘I don’t care,’ he insisted to the others. ‘I’m going to London. I’ll be rich, I’m telling you. I’ll have – I’ll live in a house bigger than Park House. With a butler and maidservants, and lamps to light all the rooms like a palace.’

Sophy Button sneezed and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Devil summoned up his determination. He could feel his power leaking out of him and its loss was intolerable, so he pinned a smile across his face.

‘Tell everyone to come. Before I go I’ll show them a spectacle to remember me by.’

After the Buttons had left Devil sat down to wait. There was silence except for the rustling of rats under the hay.

The news spread quickly enough. As twilight came a little file of contemporaries and smaller children flitted and crept towards the barn.

One of the books in his possession described a trick called the Inferno. Devil loved playing with fire and he had read through the description often enough, although he had never actually tried it out. But now he was ready to do every last thing he could to impress this small world before exchanging it for the bigger one. He had to save his own face by leaving Stanmore on a drum roll and a crash of cymbals.

There were twenty spectators gathered in the darkened barn. Only one of them had thought to bring a lantern, and there was no other light except for the box of lucifers that Jasper had been instructed to provide. Devil’s arms ached and his fingers were as stiff as wooden clothes pins. He fumbled with a lit taper, holding the wavering flame poised above a little figure he had made out of plaited straw. It was supposed to be a bowl of golden fish, but desperate times called for extreme improvisation. It was satisfying to think how demonic he would be looking with the taper’s light licking his face and deepening the shadows in his eye sockets.

Sophy Button sneezed again and Devil jumped. At the same time a gust of wind caught the barn door and slammed it shut. With the jitters in his blood Devil swung round to see who was coming. The taper spat a stream of sparks into the dusty air and the hay caught fire in a dozen different places.

The audience sat gaping, imagining this was the very spectacle they had been invited to see. Devil threw himself at the spurts of fire but as soon as he had stamped out one another flickered to life with a whisper like an evil rumour spreading. In a matter of seconds a wall of flames roared up to the barn roof. Poor Gabe was laughing, haw-haw-haw, and thudding his hands together in raucous applause.

‘Good un!’ he yelled.

‘Get outside!’ Devil bawled.

Most of the spectators were on their feet now, staring uncertainly from the fire to the barn door and back to Devil again, expecting him to work some magic that would restore the hay to its original state. Devil ran to the door and threw it open and a great gust of air was sucked in, fanning the blaze and sending a pall of smoke to stifle and blind them all.

‘Get out of here.’ This was Jasper, who was dragging one of his sisters by the arm. Children coughed and choked as they stumbled over each other. One by one they spilled out into the sweet darkness. Devil ran dementedly through the smoke, thinking of his precious books being consumed by the fire. He knew that there was no hope of beating out these flames, and that his childhood was burning up along with the hay. He was taken by the elemental urge to run, to hide, to escape the inescapable. He found his way out into the cold air and gathered himself for flight.

Then he heard Jasper yelling for Gabe. Staring out of the darkness they could all see that vast black clouds were rolling out of the barn and that the interior was an inferno, no trickery.

Wired with terror Devil ran back towards the blaze, sensing rather than seeing Jasper racing alongside him. They both stopped as a black silhouette appeared against the roaring barn, its margins fretted by flame. Gabe staggered towards them, arms outstretched. The sleeves of his old coat, his breeches, even his hair was on fire. The boy was screaming. He dropped to his knees and then fell prone as the others swarmed about him to try to beat out the flames.

Jasper pulled Devil’s collar.

‘Run,’ he said. ‘Run before the bobby gets here.’

Sophy Button howled like an animal.

‘My ma said you were the devil’s spawn, Hector Crumhall. She did.’

As he ran down the hollow way and across the fields, his feet pounding over the familiar ground, Devil was thinking that he had killed a halfwit boy. The other thought was that Jasper’s poor drunken mother, a sodden bag of bones and wet gums and muttered curses, considered that he was a devil.

The next night he slept in another barn. The nightmares of fire and Gabe’s screaming were terrible, and when he was awake and walking he was so sure the spectre of the burning boy was following him that he had to keep turning and looking over his shoulder.

The evening after that he was in the heart of London. Grand carriages and hansom cabs and handcarts crowded the streets as money and filth fought for supremacy. Exhausted, he sank down at a street corner and looked up to the gable end of a building across the way. It was painted with elaborate curling letters that read:

In his weary, famished state the word trick took on great significance. This was a message aimed at him. He was going to be a magician, the best on the London stage. He needed a new name, because Hector Crumhall had killed a boy.

Devil Wix.

The black shape outlined in flame ran at him out of dark places. Even when he was wide awake it came at him. The screams still sounded in his ears, louder even than the din of the city. If he was no longer Hector Crumhall, perhaps he could escape the apparition?

Devil Wix.

‘You’re going to drop my china cup.’ Jasper took it from his hand. Devil woke with a shudder. He rubbed his face and looked at the kettle on the hob, and at the bag beside him that contained Carlo’s decapitated head.

‘I’ll be on my way. You’ll come to see the show, Jas, won’t you?’

‘If you give me a ticket.’

‘It’ll be worth a tanner or two of anyone’s money.’

‘Not mine,’ Jasper sniffed.

The two of them briefly embraced, like the old friends they were. Neither of them had spoken of Stanmore for years. Mr Crumhall had followed his wife to the churchyard, the Buttons had drunk themselves to death, and Jasper’s two sisters were gone into service. In their different ways the two boys were doing their best to better themselves.

THREE

As Jacko Grady had said it would be, the Palmyra was partly restored. The charred ruins of stage and seating were carted away, the worst of the soot was rinsed from the walls and the pillars. The box fronts were crudely repainted, obliterating the ruined gilding, and carpenters sawed and hammered to create a new stage. Grady obtained a set of curtains, well used on some other stage. The cloth was faded and the folds exuded plumes of acrid dust. The owner was out to make some quick money and he invested as little as possible in his restoration. The theatre was still a shabby place, with none of the colour and opulence its structure called for.

The trapdoors Devil and Carlo required were cut and hinged and tested with care. Backstage on Jacko Grady’s grand opening night, Devil sat on an upturned bucket listening and waiting.

He was obliged to acknowledge disappointment. That it was a poor audience came as no great surprise, although he had hoped for better. It was true that the gallery was filled almost to capacity, but the crowd in these cheapest seats was composed mostly of rowdy young men. They came in search of novelty, spectacle and vulgar comedy, and they were ready to express their dissatisfaction when these were not immediately forthcoming. The act now on stage, only the second on the bill, was a comic vocalist and before this performer could finish his smirking delivery of ‘Kitty and the Old Corner Cupboard’ they were drowning him out by bellowing coarser versions of the chorus. As he struggled to lift his voice over the uproar of singing and guffawing the musicians played louder and faster to help him along. An object flew through the air and landed on the boards close to his feet. It was a ripe peach. The pulp sprayed over the cracked toecaps of his patent leather shoes.

In the better seats were pairs and trios of young gentlemen, sitting with arms akimbo and legs outstretched. At the supper clubs, during the acts which did not appeal to them, they could be diverted by chops and potatoes and by the young women who served them, or else resort to their own talk and cigars, but here they found themselves captive as if they had bought tickets for the opera.

Interspersed with these gentlemen and in one or two of the boxes sat a few families and some young fellows who had brought their wives or sweethearts. Two or three of these had already stood up and escorted their womenfolk to the curtained exit.

Devil dropped his head into his hands. Grady had sent out printed playbills, and he had done that well enough. For their act, all that was promised was:

Devil approved. Keep them guessing, that was the idea. But Grady had ordered the distribution of his bills in the taverns and markets and such places, and this had brought in the gallery crowd. All this was quite wrong, in Devil’s opinion. The desirable audience was composed of the very people who were now leaving. The Palmyra was an elegant theatre and the show should be an elegant affair, to which a gentleman could bring his wife and daughters, his mother or his sisters.

Devil had tried to point this out to Grady but the fat man had rudely dismissed him.

‘It would be of benefit to us all if your act proves to be as big as your mouth, Wix. Anyways, I thought it was supposed to be the Sphinx. What is this monstrous thing? It looks like a damned duke’s tomb.’

In constructing their magic cabinet Carlo and Devil had encouraged each other to pile decoration upon decoration, and the piece was ornamented with golden pinnacles and carved finials, paste jewels and panels painted with stars and suns.

‘This will be better than anything else you’ve got,’ Devil answered.

The vocalist came offstage, mopping his face with a handkerchief. Despairingly he hurried away to the dressing rooms. The next act was ready to go on. It was a pair of acrobats, one of them a supple young woman. The lower half of her face was covered by a spangled scarf and as she edged past Devil their eyes briefly met. There were tiny bells stitched to her clothing and these jingled a mocking accompaniment as her brother grasped her hand and they somersaulted out into the lights.

Devil resumed the contemplation of his own feet. It was warm in the wings and the close air was heavy with sweat and greasepaint. He needed this interval to concentrate and collect his wits. Beside him stood the cabinet and the mirrors, ready to be placed in position when the curtain fell. It was unusual for Devil to feel nervous, whatever lay in store, but there was no other way to explain the damp palms of his hands and the small impediment in his chest that seemed to catch his breathing.

Tonight was an opportunity, even though the audience was wrong and Grady was a fool.

The opportunity must not be missed.

One act followed another. The acrobats were popular, the musicians and singers less so. The curtain came down as the hem of another costume swept across Devil’s line of vision. He glanced up, and then looked higher. Carlo towered over him, Carlo on stilts that were concealed by a long robe and an academic gown stitched with occult symbols. He wore the grey wig Devil had bought for him, the horsehair combed smoothly back from his brow. Under the stage paint his long-chinned face looked authoritative, even noble. The dwarf was pleased with his appearance.

‘Ready?’ Devil asked automatically.

Carlo’s lips twisted to indicate that he was always ready, that Devil would never find him in any other condition. In a moment of fellow feeling Devil even patted the dwarf’s shoulder but all that met his touch was the wicker frame that Carlo wore over his shoulders to increase their breadth beneath the philosopher’s gown.

A pair of stagehands lifted the cabinet between them and positioned it on the marks. Devil himself carried the precious mirrors and placed them on the angled lines he had so carefully calculated and measured. When they were aligned the cabinet appeared to stand clear of the stage on its four legs, with no other support or place of concealment visible from the body of the theatre.

The curtain rose once more.

The stage was empty apart from a soot-black basket and the cabinet itself. Paste jewels glittered under the lights. To begin with there had been some tittering and a couple of louder guffaws, but the effect was sufficiently striking to capture attention. Devil swept onstage into an expectant silence, the first real silence of the evening. As the evil philosopher he was costumed in stark black. The lights dimmed, there was a slow roll of the drum and he threw open the double doors of the cabinet. There was nothing in the velvet-lined interior, so much nothing that the emptiness seemed infinite. Devil slid his hands inside and spread his arms to prove that the audience’s eyes did not deceive them. As he withdrew there was a flash of light, and a puff smoke rose from the cabinet. Devil came forward to the footlights and bowed low.

‘Are you finished?’ some wag called down.

Towards the back of the stalls Devil spotted Jasper Button, seated with a young woman on either side of him. He was glad that after all Jasper had come to see him perform.

Devil held up one hand. ‘I have not yet begun,’ he said.

His air of authority was enough to quell the unrest. The audience shifted in their seats. There was another flash of light and smoke drifted across the stage.

He led Carlo out from the wings at the end of a short length of rope. The captive’s hands were bound at the wrists. He moved at a slow shuffle, his head hanging like a prisoner’s. Devil brought him to centre stage.

Between them, in the past days, they had worked up some lines of dialogue.

Devil was pleased with his own literary abilities and he had composed a declamatory paragraph or two to establish the proper degree of evil exhibited by himself. Carlo’s response to the first recitation of this had been to scowl, pinch his own lips between finger and thumb and then jab a forefinger at Devil.

‘Keep the jawing short. Tell ’em a bit of a story as fast as you can do it and move on to the action.’

There had been a day or two of violent disagreement followed by a period of coolness, but Carlo had won. The exchange now established simply that Good and Evil were locked in a struggle for possession of the formula for transforming base metal into gold. This was established mostly by sign language accompanied by plenty of smoke, drum and cymbal.

‘I shall never yield my secret,’ said the good philosopher. ‘Never, while breath remains in this body.’

He raised his grey-wigged head and held it high.

Behind him, with relish, Devil drew a long blade from beneath his academic gown.

The audience fell silent.

‘Then the breath shall be extinguished,’ Devil cried.

He swung the blade in a glimmering arc. There was a collective gasp. Following a loud bang, a second’s total darkness and a savage chord from the musicians, the lights flared again. Devil stood alone in a swirl of smoke. The knife dripped with gore and at his feet a huddled outline lay beneath the good philosopher’s robe.

Devil reached down to the soot-black basket and slid one gloved hand into the interior. With a flourish he pulled out the severed head and brandished it by a hank of the grey hair.

Jasper had done his work well. The noble philosopher’s features were Carlo’s smeared with blood, the eyes glazed in death. When the executioner tilted it to show the mutilated neck a woman screamed aloud in horror. Devil bared his teeth in a snarl and tossed the head back into the basket. Once the grisly thing was hidden from view and the shock of its appearance subsided, there was a tide of applause followed by a substantial rising cheer from the gallery. In the wings Jacko Grady stood watching, thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat and feet planted apart, a cloud of cigar smoke about his head.

Devil passed in front of the ornate cabinet. He caressed the gilded pinnacles and touched the paste gems with the tip of his finger. He uttered some words in an unintelligible language and flung open the doors.

Another gasp rose from the auditorium. The good philosopher’s head floated in black space within. It turned from side to side and its ashen lips parted.

Devil demanded, ‘Tell me the formula now. You are my prisoner for eternity.’

‘I curse you to eternity and beyond,’ Carlo’s voice answered.

Devil threw back his head and laughed. He stretched out one foot and kicked over the basket. It rolled, empty, towards the footlights. He picked up the sword once more and drove the point into the lower part of the cabinet where the living body attached to the head must surely be concealed. He stabbed the emptiness over and over again.

‘My secret is mine,’ the head mocked him.

‘Die, then.’

‘You cannot kill me. I will always be here. In sleep, in waking, in daylight and darkness. Wherever you travel, I will be at your shoulder. I shall be always watching you’.

His words echoed in the air. Across Devil’s face in rapid succession passed realisation, understanding of what he had done, and then the dawning of a terrible fear. It was a moment to behold, and the audience edged further forwards in their seats.

Carlo Morris had agreed to throw in his lot with Devil just as deliberately as his partner had chosen him. He had done so because he recognised from the outset that Devil Wix was a useful melodramatic actor. All he needed was proper restraint.

Jacko Grady pulled on his cigar.

Out on the stage Devil had closed the doors and taken a step backwards from his magic cabinet. He snapped the blade of the sword. He fell on his knees beside the black basket and dropped into it the fragments of metal and the twisted hilt.

‘Forgive me!’ he cried.

There was a deafening drum roll and every pair of eyes in the house fastened on Devil as he prostrated himself. The lights flashed off and then burned cold blue and silver.

With his forehead pressed to the boards and dust in his nostrils making him want to sneeze, Devil wordlessly prayed that the sequence would go smoothly. This was the trickiest part of the entire illusion.

Across the stage to his right the tumbled heap of clothes belonging to the good philosopher stirred and grew as it took on human shape. The gown’s hood fell back, and the audience saw that the noble grey head rested on broad shoulders again. Standing tall, Carlo held up his arms. The sleeves dropped to expose his bare wrists, freed from the rope.

When Carlo leaned over him Devil shielded his head with his hands, but his rival did not strike him. Instead he picked up the black basket and held it high in the air. More smoke coiled from the interior.

Carlo tipped the basket. There was no broken sword. Instead, a stream of golden coins cascaded over the evil philosopher’s body.

‘Here is your black heart’s desire,’ the good philosopher called. ‘You shall have no happiness from it.’

The curtain fell as clapping and whistling surged through the Palmyra.

Devil scrambled to his feet and embraced the sweating Carlo. His blood jigged in the euphoria of a successful performance.

‘You did well, my friend.’

Carlo swung an extended leg. ‘I did better than that. I am a hero. Let me see you fastening on stilts and then climbing a ladder into your costume, all in the space of two seconds.’

‘Yes, that was excellent. And I performed the sleights to the same standard.’

‘You were adequate.’

The curtain swept up, they took their bow and it fell again.

The stagehands ran on to collect the props. Devil and Carlo shook hands, although even this much appreciation was awkward. They hurried offstage together. Jacko Grady picked a shred of tobacco off his thick tongue and cleared his throat.

‘Too long,’ he growled. ‘They were restless out there. Make it faster tomorrow.’

‘How many seats sold?’ Devil pleasantly enquired.

‘One hundred and seven paid for.’

The capacity of the theatre was two hundred and fifty.

‘You should give us more stage time, not less. Word travels fast, Mr Grady. Tomorrow everyone will be talking about Boldoni and Wix.’

Figures relating to percentages danced between them. They stood on opposite sides of this barrier of numbers until Grady waved Devil and Carlo aside. The Swiss engineer Heinrich Bayer moved out on to the stage with the beautiful Lucie on his arm. The violinist began to play and the couple danced, Lucie’s shining hair curling over her white shoulders and Bayer bending his head as if to breathe in her perfume. Their timing was mechanically perfect, but Lucie’s smile was fixed and sadness drifted from her creator like mist rising from water.

A voice called from the back of the gallery.

‘What else does the lady do?’

Laughter broke out, interspersed with catcalls and coarse observations. Heinrich gave no sign of having heard them and Lucie continued to smile and rotate her head. The waltz ended and the band began to play a polka. Lucie danced the polka with just the same degree of elegant detachment.

The show concluded with a sentimental soprano. The audience had thinned out, the rump of it was growing ever more unruly, and when the final curtain came down it was to nobody’s particular regret. In his narrow cubbyhole of an office Jacko Grady took his seat behind a card table with a cash box set on it. Devil and Carlo waited at the midpoint of the queue of performers, having been engrossed in a card game with the comedy tenor and the male half of the acrobat duo. Carlo had won a shilling. The acrobat’s partner looked through her eyelashes at Devil as the press of performers nudged them together.

Miss Eliza Dunlop was also waiting. Her married sister Faith Shaw and Jasper Button were talking together, in the manner of people who did not know each other very well but who are concerned to be pleasant. At the end of the show Jasper had asked her, ‘Would you care to meet the good and evil philosophers in person, Eliza? You enjoyed their performance, I think.’

‘It was very gory,’ Faith shuddered.

‘It was the best act in the programme,’ Eliza said in her composed way.

‘It was, but that is not to say a very great deal,’ Jasper laughed.

‘And I am sure you know perfectly well that your wax head was the best thing about the best act,’ Eliza told him.

In fact, she had been astonished by the brio of the little playlet. The confident speed of it, and the smoke and flashing lights and drum rolls had been thrilling, and somehow affecting. It had also been macabre and not a little vulgar, of course, but still the illusion – however it had been achieved – was impressive.

‘Thank you,’ Jasper said, with evident pleasure.

Eliza liked Jasper reasonably well.

Faith’s husband Matthew Shaw was the manager at the Baker Street waxworks gallery, and one afternoon when the sisters had called on him there he had introduced the talented modeller to his wife’s younger sister. A little time later Eliza had been happy enough to accept Jasper’s invitation to accompany him to the opening of the new theatre of varieties, and Mrs Shaw made up the party while Matty stayed at home with their two small boys.

‘I am in no need of chaperoning, Faith,’ Eliza had protested. ‘I am a modern woman.’

‘You are indeed,’ Faith agreed, but she had come along just the same.

This threesome lingered for a few moments in the Palmyra’s foyer as a mob of overheated young men surged in the entrance, shouting to each other about where and how to continue their evening’s pleasures. Two of them took sudden offence and they squared up, swaying and jabbing until the theatre’s doorman bundled them out into the street. He was seeking to secure the premises, so along with the rougher elements of the audience Jasper’s party found themselves outside in the noise and glare of the Strand.

‘I think we shall make our way to the stage door and wait there for my friends,’ Jasper said quickly. He shepherded the two women a few steps to the alleyway that ran down the side of the theatre.

Eliza was not afraid of a pair of brawling inebriates, but she allowed Jasper to guide her. As soon as they turned the corner they were buffeted by a sharp wind that funnelled up from the river, carrying with it the stink of mud and horse manure and wet straw. The cobbles were greasy with the damp of a November evening, and they reflected the glimmer of a single torch burning in a holder next to the unmarked stage entrance. Jasper was about to knock when the door was suddenly flung open. A line of people emerged, but before she could distinguish them she became aware of more footsteps skidding down the slippery cobbles. Someone fell and loudly cursed, and another voice jeered, ‘Get up, Makins. See here, it’s the philosopher. Looking to cut off another couple of heads, are you?’

‘Whoa, and the dancer with the pretty doll. Where is she? In the box? Care to loan her, would you? I’ll teach her a different dance.’

‘Ha ha.’

Eliza saw a man in a threadbare coat throw himself across a trunk on a porter’s wooden cart. Two toughs wrenched his arms behind his back and tried to haul the trunk from underneath him.

More figures scuffled down the alley to reinforce the assailants and seconds later a proper fight erupted.

‘Get inside the door,’ Jasper called hoarsely to the two women. Faith did as she was told but Eliza stood her ground. She saw how Jasper pitched straight in alongside the man she recognised as the evil philosopher, as if they had both done this sort of work before. They made a useful pair of combatants. The ringleader staggered backwards from a punch delivered by the philosopher, and Jasper followed up with a series of jabs which obliged two others to abandon their attempt to wrestle open the trunk. Seemingly oblivious to the fighting, the man in the overcoat knelt to secure the catches, his pale hands shaking.

Eliza became aware that a considerable force was operating at a secondary level. She looked down and saw a miniature man, hardly more than three feet tall. He launched himself between the legs of the attackers, pummelling and kicking until one of them stopped short. This man swiped his coat-sleeve across his moustache, gasping in derision.

‘Hulloa, who is this? Is the midget your familiar, Mr Conjuror?’

Carlo’s reply was a savage punch at the tender spot behind the man’s knee. He yelled with pain, at which his nearest accomplice responded with a kick that connected with Carlo’s jaw. The little man collapsed like a punctured bladder. Eliza cried out in dismay and ran the few steps to his side. She sank to the cobbles and held his head in her lap as bright blood ran from his mouth.

A whistle sounded at the top of the alley. Instantly the fight broke up and the assailants ran off in the direction of the river. The man in the overcoat took up a protective position in front of his trunk. Jasper and the philosopher dusted themselves down and tried to look inconspicuous as the bobby marched towards them. None of them had the slightest wish to attract the attention of the Metropolitan Police. Carlo opened his eyes and saw Eliza.

He sighed and thickly muttered, ‘Don’th revive me. I am quithe comfothable.’

The police officer loomed over them.

‘Is this person badly hurt?’

‘I don’t believe so,’ Eliza said. ‘There were some drunken creatures who ran that way …’

Jasper came to her aid. He explained that they had been to the theatre and had been set upon as they made their way to meet friends at the stage door. He didn’t think the attackers were thieves, but they had been threatening enough. ‘There are ladies here,’ he added.

‘What is this?’ the bobby demanded, pointing his stick at the pale man’s locked trunk.

‘Theatrical properties,’ he answered in a Swiss-German accent. The policeman frowned.

‘Open up.’

Eliza gave her handkerchief to the dwarf. Sitting up he spat some blood and reached a clean-enough finger into his mouth to explore the damage. The flesh over his jaw was darkly swelling.

‘Rest for a moment, then we’ll take you to find water and a dressing. You will be quite all right,’ she reassured him.

The bobby was staring at the trunk’s contents. A woman’s body, folded in half, was nested into a cocoon of padded velvet. Disbelieving, he ran his hands over the rubber limbs and shone his lamp into the cold glass eyes.

‘I am an engineer of automata,’ Heinrich Bayer said.

The policeman straightened up.

‘Are you, indeed? It takes all sorts. Go home now, the lot of you. I’ll see if I can catch up with your friends.’

Carlo muttered a thick phrase and Eliza patted his arm in gentle restraint.

As soon as the bobby had moved off a small knot of performers emerged from the stage door with Faith in their midst. Jasper groaned.

‘Faith, are you all right? And you, Eliza? How in the world am I going to explain to Matty that I brought you to an innocuous evening at the variety and we ended up in a pretty bout of fisticuffs?’

‘You could avoid any mention of it. That would be the easiest course,’ Eliza advised.

In the presence of the policeman the evil philosopher had made himself next to invisible. Now he seemed to regain his full stature, even to be somehow bigger and made of more solid matter than the rest of them. He became the inevitable pivot of their strange group.

‘Jasper, you have lost none of your abilities. Won’t you introduce me to your friends?’

Jasper muttered, ‘Mr Hector, ah, Mr Devil Wix. Mrs Shaw, Miss Eliza Dunlop.’

Devil bowed to Faith, but Eliza was still crouching on the cobbles with one arm supporting Carlo. The dwarf was sitting up, dabbing at his smashed mouth with her handkerchief. Devil folded himself to their level just as Jacko Grady’s barrel body and surprisingly diminutive shoes emerged from the stage door.

‘What’s this?’ the manager demanded.

‘Mr Boldoni was attacked by some pleasant individuals from your choice audience.’

‘Don’t let him lie here in front of my theatre. Is he hurt? Wix, you’d better make sure he’s fit to perform tomorrow.’

Grady secured the big padlock with much jangling of a large bunch of keys. The performance was calculated to display ownership and Devil hated him for it. Grady picked his way past them and headed towards the Strand. Turning his head, Devil saw Eliza Dunlop stick out her tongue at the man’s receding back.

‘Of course he’s hurt,’ she retorted. To Devil she said, ‘We need warm salt water to rinse out his mouth. And some light to inspect the damage.’

Carlo moaned as the pain in his jaw intensified.

‘Shhh,’ she told him, and stroked his hair.

Devil noticed that her gloves were blotched with blood and Carlo’s spittle. This detail touched him more directly than the prettiest smile or the most fashionable dress ever could have done.

Who is this? he asked himself and his eyes slid at once to Jasper’s neat boots, standing only a yard away beside Mrs Shaw.

Ah, is that it? Fair enough, he thought.

To one side of their little group Heinrich Bayer looked as if he had been violated. His face was colourless and he was trembling, his hands still on the clasps of Lucie’s box.

Devil put his hands under the dwarf’s arms. He scrambled to his feet, staggering a little under Carlo’s unexpected weight, but he found that he was able to carry him.

‘Follow me. It’s only two hundred yards,’ he called over his shoulder to the others.

The private room was on the first floor of a public house well known to Devil. The landlord admitted them and put some coals on the fire. Eliza Dunlop took off her cloak and bonnet (she had thick, glossy dark hair) and once Devil had deposited Carlo on a high stool the two women inspected his mouth. Devil gave orders and a tray clinking with glasses and a bottle soon arrived, followed by the pot boy carrying a basin and ewer and a kettle of hot water. Devil mixed a hot toddy and put it into Bayer’s hands.

‘Drink that up, man. You look as green as a lettuce. Don’t faint on me, please. Jas, you will refuse the offer of strong drink, but here is one for me. You shall have a tot, Carlo, when your medical review is completed. Good health, gentlemen. We may or may not have something to celebrate tonight. Unfortunately most of the power to determine such matters lies with Jacko Grady.’

Eliza looked over her shoulder. ‘The fat man?’

‘The same. He is the owner and manager of the Palmyra theatre. For the present,’ Devil added and tipped back his toddy.

‘He is an extremely unpleasant person,’ she said.

Devil glanced again at her discarded gloves, the emblems of the evening’s events. Carlo swilled out his mouth with hot salt water and spat a brownish stream into the bowl Faith Shaw held out for him. Eliza patted his shoulder and gave him a strip of her sister’s clean handkerchief, snipped with a pair of nail scissors taken from her reticule, to put inside his mouth.

‘Well done. You will heal up in a few days. I don’t believe your jaw is broken.’

Carlo couldn’t smile, or even speak clearly with his mouth stuffed with linen but his appreciation was plain.

‘Are you thuh they ith no boken bone?’

Eliza ran her fingers over his jaw then cupped his large chin in her hands. Carlo gazed up at her with as much admiring awe as if she had stepped out of a vision of heaven.

‘I’m not a nurse, but I know a little anatomy. It’s badly bruised where that ruffian’s toe connected, and there are tooth cuts to your tongue and the insides of your cheeks. You should gargle with salt water to keep your mouth clean, but I am confident that there is nothing more serious.’

‘We muth go on tomohoh. Thuh will be nowt to pleathe an audience if I am not thuh.’

Carlo waved his empty hand to Devil who passed him his tot in eloquent silence. The dwarf removed his dressing, drank, and winced extravagantly as the alcohol stung his open cuts. Mrs Shaw and her sister had declined Devil’s offer of a small glass of wine, but they agreed to a cup of tea and the pot boy now reappeared with a second tray.

They disposed themselves around the fire. Faith Shaw presided over the teapot and Heinrich Bayer released Lucie from her velvet casing, bringing forward a chair so she could join them. He placed her hands in her lap, arranged her skirts and straightened her necklace. He was more comfortable now that he could see her and be assured that she was not threatened, and his face regained its more normal degree of pallor. Eliza watched all this with her bright eyes, but when he felt her attention on him Herr Bayer stared at the floor.

Even so, it was a convivial gathering. Jasper stopped saying that he must take the ladies home or else poor Matthew would be frantic with worry.

Faith remarked, ‘He will not be worried, Jasper, because he knows that we are safe with you.’

‘We can look after ourselves,’ Eliza corrected her. ‘Besides which we have the security of this lady’s blameless company, don’t we?’

‘Lucie. Her name is Lucie,’ Heinrich insisted.

Eliza left her seat and went to take the automaton’s hand. If she was disconcerted by its lifelike appearance coupled with the cold touch of the rubber skin she gave no sign of it. ‘How do you do?’ she murmured.

Heinrich was pleased. ‘She is well, thank you. A little tired this evening. Our stage performances are always exhausting for her, and I wish the audience had been more appreciative. They were a rough crowd.’

Eliza returned to her seat. ‘Is Lucie your daughter? Perhaps a closer relationship? You dance together so beautifully.’

Devil stared. Miss Dunlop was unusual for looking like a perfectly orthodox young woman and yet being startlingly un-demure. He noticed now that Jasper Button regarded her with admiration that was tinged with possessiveness. How charming, how pleasant for Jasper, he thought.

‘Lucie is my life’s work. And also my dear companion,’ Heinrich was saying. He didn’t look at Eliza as he spoke. ‘She is the amalgam of art and artifice. Few people understand what it is to have created such a thing. I designed each mechanism that animates her, I made or contrived to have made every separate piece of her.’

‘Maybe such appreciation requires an artistic temperament? Eliza is herself an artist, you know,’ Faith put in.

Devil liked the sly, humorous mischief displayed by the two sisters.

‘I am only a student of art,’ Eliza demurred. ‘I attend classes in life drawing, sculpture, painting. Of course, I don’t have the means to pay outright for my tuition so I make payments in kind by working as a life model.’

The images generated by this information caused Devil to cough into his brandy. Jasper frowned at him.

‘You do know thomething abouth anatomy,’ Carlo agreed.

‘Shall we finish the bottle?’ Devil wondered as he stirred up the fire with the iron poker. Carlo held out his glass. Jasper looked at his pocket watch and Heinrich glanced towards Lucie. The sisters seemed perfectly at ease.

Conversation turned to the evening’s entertainment, and its strengths and shortcomings.

‘Tell us about the Philosophers illusion, Mr Wix,’ Faith said. ‘We were most impressed.’

Devil bowed. ‘I regret that I can’t reveal to you how the illusion was actually performed. No professional magician will ever reveal his secrets, even amongst friends. I was helped by Jasper’s skills, as you saw. His modelled head of Carlo is a masterpiece. And Carlo himself has certain, ah, invaluable attributes.’

Carlo spat into the wadded dressings to clear his mouth. ‘You thaw a bocth trick. It’th thimple enough but thith one can’t be performed without a dwarf to do the work. The idea and the thkill in it were mine. Devil and I made up a bit of bithineth to go with it. You get a bigger effeck on a proper thtage like tonight’th, where you’ve got muthicianth and lighth and thuchlike.’

‘But … you appeared to be tall,’ Faith put in.

The dwarf shrugged. ‘Thtilth.’

‘I am relieved it doesn’t cause you pain to talk so much,’ Devil said to him.

‘Devil?’ Eliza softly wondered. ‘Didn’t I hear Jasper call you Hector first of all?’

‘Devil Wix is my stage name. It is … simpler to go by that in both spheres of my existence.’

‘And you and Jasper have known each other since you were boys, I believe?’

The firelight glowed on pewter dishes and the smoke-yellowed walls. From the street beneath the window came the rumble of carriage wheels.

Devil gave a brief nod. The two sisters exchanged a glance and Jasper produced his pocket watch for the last time.

‘If we are to have any hope of seeing you safely back home before midnight …’

‘It has been a fascinating evening. Thank you,’ Faith said as she politely stood up.

Jasper put her cloak round her shoulders and then performed the same service for Eliza. Carlo sat fingering his swollen jaw and Heinrich, affected by the two glasses of brandy he had drunk, silently stared into the depths of the fire.

Eliza smoothed the ruined gloves over her fingers.

‘Conjurors? Magicians? Is that what you are?’ She spoke generally but the question was addressed to Devil.

‘You would not call Herr Bayer a magician, I think. None of us would be pleased with conjuror, which sounds to me like some fellow conning for pennies on the street. I prefer illusionists,’ he said.

Eliza put on her hat. ‘The illusionists,’ she slowly repeated.

To his surprise Devil heard himself confiding, ‘I would like to transform the Palmyra theatre into a palace of illusions. It should be the home of magical effects, of transformations and mysteries and bewitchments. It should be a place of wonderment.’

‘I think the fat man stands in the way of your dream.’

‘Not for ever.’

‘I hope not. I like the sound of your Palmyra.’

Eliza held out her hand and Devil shook it, then her sister’s.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Devil murmured to Jasper as they wished each other goodnight.

‘I wouldn’t have missed my head’s grand theatrical debut. I hope the show will be a great success.’ Jasper was a kindly man, but he couldn’t keep the doubt out of his voice.

‘No question.’

Heinrich suddenly jumped up, knocking his chair sideways and staggering somewhat before placing a reassuring hand on Lucie’s shoulder.

‘Success? Listen to me regarding this if you please. I tell you what you need to put in your act. I tell you what will make all the difference.’

‘Yes?’ Devil sighed.

‘You should have a woman in it. I have an idea for such a thing.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you. You would be the expert on such matters.’

It was Eliza who paused in the doorway.

‘He’s right, you know,’ she said to Devil.

‘Come, my dear. We have a matinée tomorrow,’ Heinrich told Lucie.

Now that the impromptu party was over and the agony in his jaw came to the forefront, a black mood descended on Carlo. He grumbled to Devil, ‘Wonderment, did you thay? How far will the two thilling and thicthpenth we have earned thith evening go towardth wonderment? Particularly thinth you have laid out motht of it on brandy.’

Heinrich Bayer was negotiating the doorway with the wheeled trunk. Swaying a little, he let go of the handles and reached two fingers into the pocket of his tragic coat. He held out a shilling to Devil.

‘Please take this. I wish to hear no one say that Lucie and I do not stand our treat.’

‘Put your money away,’ Devil said, against his inclinations. He turned to Carlo.

‘Give me time, my friend. Then you shall see.’

FOUR

The young couple walked southwards through the park. Suspended behind bare trees the pale orange sun held little warmth, and the insistence of the wind obliged them to keep up a steady pace. Jasper Button would have preferred to stroll and perhaps to have taken hold of Eliza’s arm, but he was compensated for the lack of this opportunity by the way brisk exercise in the chill air brought colour to her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. He thought how pretty she looked in her neat bonnet and brown coat, and this demure exterior coupled with his awareness of where she was heading only increased his pleasure. She was not just a beauty. She both was and was entirely not what she seemed. He had never met anyone whose contradictions fascinated him so entirely. His admiration made him a little awkward in her company, but he was a determined man who did not lack self-confidence. He would win her in the end, Jasper assured himself. Eliza Dunlop would be his wife, and they would have a handsome family together. Aspects of this plan brought a flush to his cheeks to match Eliza’s own.

Between the trees ahead there was a flash of gold. Laughing, Eliza pointed to a Gothic spire and a canopy topped with pinnacles that spiked the fading sky.

‘The Memorial looks just like the Philosophers’ cabinet,’ she said.

‘Or rather, Devil constructed his cabinet to resemble the Memorial,’ Jasper replied. ‘In either case, they are both monstrosities.’

The sun was setting now and the gilt bronze of the Prince Consort’s statue glimmered so harshly in the horizontal rays that Jasper lifted his hand and pretended to shield his eyes. They skirted the west side of the structure and stopped to examine the modern frieze and sculptures. Jasper seized the opportunity to link Eliza’s arm in his. Her gloved hand rested on his forearm, neither yielding nor resisting. Her chin was tipped upwards as she gazed at the enthroned Albert.

‘I am half expecting his head to rotate and Carlo’s voice to utter a dire warning, aren’t you?’ In a mournful voice she quoted, ‘“I curse you to eternity and beyond.”’

‘Carlo isn’t of a size for it. It would take a giant to work a trick inside that vast thing.’

‘You are right. They would have to recruit a suitable one. Then it would be Boldoni, Wix and Cyclops, and that doesn’t sound nearly so good.’

Eliza laughed again and withdrew her arm. She turned her back on the Memorial and began to walk so fast that Jasper had to scurry to keep up with her. He was thinking, Does Boldoni and Wix sound good to her? Why is that?

‘I am afraid I shall be late,’ she said.

‘You have plenty of time.’

They passed through the traffic in front of the imposing dome of the Royal Albert Hall and set off through the streets of South Kensington. The evening was closing in, and yellow lights shone in comfortable rooms where the curtains had not yet been closed. Jasper admired the handsome stucco residences with their solid front doors surmounting flights of stone steps.

‘I would like to live in one of these houses some day,’ he said. There was no reason not to be ambitious.

‘They’re very large.’

‘A suitable size for a family.’

She turned her head and their eyes met. ‘Is that really what you want, Jasper?’

Her directness unnerved him a little but he answered with complete conviction, ‘Yes. Of course it is. A wife, a family, a comfortable home and security for all of us. What man wouldn’t wish for the same?’

‘Quite a number, I believe,’ she said in her composed manner.

Jasper persisted, ‘And what do you want, Eliza?’

They walked under a street lamp and as the light swept over her face he noticed the sudden bright eagerness of her expression. She looked almost avid, he thought.

‘Ah. I want to know the world, and myself.’

Jasper smiled. He sometimes forgot it, but she was very young. Barely twenty years old. He felt the opposite weight of his own cynical maturity, forged by the years in Stanmore as much as by those that had followed. Eliza was quick to follow his thoughts.

‘You think that sounds jejune? Believe me, I have considered my future with proper seriousness, even though you think I am hardly old enough to have learned my alphabet.’

‘Not in the least. I think you are amazingly aware.’

Eliza almost tossed her head. ‘For one so young and so female, do you mean to say?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I do not want to be like my poor mother. Nor do I even want to be like my sister Faith.’

Jasper knew that Faith and Eliza were the daughters of a moderately prosperous greengrocer. Their mother had been a dutiful wife who had devoted herself to the care of her husband and daughters, always putting aside her own quiet interests in choral music and landscape painting, and then had died of a consumption before Faith turned fifteen. Until Faith’s marriage to Matthew Shaw an aunt had lived in the Dunlop household, but once that union was accomplished the aunt had grown tired of her role and returned to her own home, leaving Eliza in the care of her father. Mr Dunlop had soon remarried, but Eliza did not hold a high level of regard for her mother’s replacement. She had lived next with Faith and Matty, but when their first child was born a nursemaid arrived to help the new mother and the small house had been distinctly too small for all of them. By this time Eliza had declared that she would study art, her determination to do so only increased by John Dunlop’s opinion that this would be a waste of her time and his money.

‘Nevertheless, it is what I shall do,’ Eliza said.

She had a tiny amount of capital of her own, left to her by her mother, and this she used to establish herself in a room in a ladies’ lodging house in Bayswater. From here she had only to walk across the park to the Rawlinson School of Art.

‘A life model?’ her stepmother had gasped, her eyes two circles in her circular face.

‘Yes. It is a perfectly respectable job, and I need employment. Would you and my father prefer it if I went into service?’

John Dunlop had plenty of other pressing concerns, and there would soon be a new addition to his family.

‘Eliza reads books. She has educated herself out of our understanding, my dear. We must allow her to make her own mistakes,’ he said.

So Eliza had got her own way, which was the usual course of events.

Jasper asked too quickly, ‘Why don’t you want to be like your sister? Matty is a good man, they have healthy children, Faith appears – to me, at least – to be very contented.’

‘I hope so. But why do you assume that what makes my sister content would have the same result for me?’

He longed to tell her, Because I want to make you happy. Our happiness together will be my life’s ambition.

They had reached the steps of the school. Preposterously, Jasper found himself scanning the area for a spot where he might sink to his knees and propose to her. He didn’t manage to do this, or anything except gape at her like a village idiot.

A dark thought quivered at the margin of his consciousness, but out of long practice he suppressed it.

Eliza skipped up the steps and paused with her gloved hand on the massive doorknob.

‘You know, Jasper, there are so many places and things I would like to see. There is so much to learn.’

‘Yes,’ Jasper agreed, sounding even in his own ears the essence of dullness.

‘Thank you for walking me here.’

‘I’ll come back after the class and see you home again.’

‘No, please don’t do that. I can look after myself.’

Here was the nub of it, he understood. He wanted to protect her, but to place herself under a man’s protection went against what Eliza imagined to be her independent principles. He would have to be patient.

‘All right.’

She waved her small hand and the heavy door closed behind her.

Disconsolate, Jasper walked away. They had not quite quarrelled, but still the discussion had not taken the direction he had hoped for.

Inside the school’s domed entrance hall Eliza took a moment to collect herself. Students on their way to five o’clock classes clipped across the black-and-white marble floor, the double doors to Professor Rawlinson’s office stood partly open to reveal a slice of oriental carpet, portraits lining the stairs gazed down at her with welcome indifference. Jasper’s unspoken urgency, his sheer concern, had ruffled her temper. The school’s atmosphere of calm focus on art was soothing. She was pleased to find herself a small – but still essential – component in the functioning of this higher machine.

She untied her bonnet and mounted the stairs towards the Life Room.

‘Good evening gentlemen, Miss Frazier.’

The students had been lounging at their boards but they sat up as soon as Raleigh Coope RA, Master of Life Drawing, came in.

‘Good evening, Mr Coope.’

The Academician was an admired and respected teacher.

Eliza waited behind the screen. She was ready for the class. When the room fell silent she experienced a small flutter of nerves, but this always happened before she took a pose.

‘Miss Dunlop, if you are ready to join us, please?’

She emerged into the room. There was the usual circle of gentlemen, Charles Egan and Ralph Vine and the others, and one lady, Miss Frazier, in her tweed skirt and artist’s smock blouse. A mixed life drawing class was highly unusual, but the Rawlinson was a very modern school.

At the centre of the circle was an empty chair. Eliza walked to it, enjoying the snag of tension in the air. She untied the string of her robe and slipped it off, and Mr Coope took it from her and hung it within her reach. Naked, Eliza sat down and found her pose. She turned her head to reveal her neck, eased her shoulders, curled one hand and extended the fingers of the other on her thigh, letting all the bones and ligaments of her body loosen and settle in their proper alignment. A faint stirring of a draught brushed her skin.

Her gaze found the canvas she liked on the opposite wall. It was a blue-and-grey composition of sea, shingle and sky. She let her thoughts gather at the margin of this other place, and then she slipped into it as if into the sea itself.

The only sounds were the scrawl and slither of pencils on paper and Mr Coope’s slow tread as he circled the room.

The class lasted for two hours, with a short break halfway through during which Eliza put on her robe and drank a cup of tea. Miss Frazier ate a sandwich and read her book while most of the young men went outside to smoke and talk. The routine was familiar, even including Charles Egan’s attempts to engage Eliza in banter after Mr Coope brought the class to an end and left the room. She didn’t find any aspect of the work in the least tiring. She felt clean and refreshed after the dreamlike hours of wandering within the sea painting.

When Eliza emerged from the school she found herself satisfactorily alone, and briefly hesitated. An omnibus route passed quite close to her intended destination, but she noticed a hansom cab waiting nearby. She told herself that she took it on impulse, although at a deeper level she knew that this was what she had intended all along.

It had been a bad night. The house was less than half full and the sparse audience was sullen. All the performers were affected by the poor reception of their best efforts, and Jacko Grady’s brandy-fuelled bad temper and curses as they came offstage only added to the atmosphere of despondency.

Devil couldn’t see what was happening beneath the concealed trapdoor but Carlo had been slow to perform the demanding manoeuvre leading to his reappearance in the good philosopher’s robe, and there were three or four long seconds of delay before the heap of clothing stirred and resurrected itself. Devil lay waiting with his face in the stage dust and silently swore. Fortunately the audience seemed too sunk into lethargy even to notice the mistake.

When they came off Jacko Grady muttered to Devil, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you two? I keep telling you to go faster, Wix, not the opposite. Get it right or get out of my theatre.’

Devil clenched his fists within the sleeves of his costume. He hated the fat man so much that his fingers itched to close about his neck. In the foetid corner where they changed he took his fury out on the dwarf.

‘Grady’s right. You were like a dog in a sack out there. This is our chance, this act. Nothing less than perfection will do for Boldoni and Wix.’

Carlo’s bruised face turned even darker, but not before Devil saw the flicker of shame in it. He was proud and he would be even more disappointed with the night than Devil had been.

He snapped, ‘Shut your sloppy mouth. Where would this act be without me, I’d like to know? Who are you? Nothing but a tuppenny broadsman.’

‘What happened?’

‘Bloody stilt jammed in the trap.’ Carlo thrust out his hand. The heel of it was scraped, and freckled with splinters where he had evidently wrenched the raw wood to free himself. Silently Devil handed him a wet rag to wipe the skin clean. Next to them Heinrich took Lucie in his arms and arranged her ringlets over her shoulders before they went out into the lights. Bascia, the female partner of the acrobatic duo, sniggered and muttered something under her breath to her brother. The tiny bells stitched to her costume tinkled like an echo of laughter.

Devil tried to breathe evenly but suppressed frustration only made his heart knock against his ribs. Tremors ran under his skin and he shook as if in a fever. Failure was at hand, and out of failure fear blossomed.

The old figure of darkness edged with flame took shape and sprang at him. It was as real in that moment as Carlo or Grady. Devil recoiled. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to block out the apparition, but the screams of a dying boy were loud enough to deafen him.

Leave me alone, Devil inwardly howled. You are gone, I am still here.

He made himself drop his hands. If he brought his mind to bear on the here and now, he knew that the shape of Gabe would fade away.

He forced himself to think.

The badness of the show was Grady’s fault. Like its poor performers the theatre itself was cracking and subsiding all round them. Grady had chased away the proper audience, the front row customers in silk hats and jewels, and in their place he encouraged vulgarians and drunks – and not sufficient numbers even of those. The coarse comedian who now closed the first half was supposed to appeal to Grady’s mob, but the man wasn’t good enough to make even the lowest people laugh. Without subtlety, without at least giving an audience the opportunity to feign innocence at double meanings, dirty talk was just dirt. Devil was surprised to note his own prudery but he knew what was right: he knew what would bring in the crowds and their money. The failure was Grady’s, not his own.

The dark figure was still there, in the periphery of his vision. He was afraid of a memory, and a memory couldn’t hurt him. He aimed a vicious kick at the inner spectre but his foot connected only with a storage hamper that toppled over and spilled its contents. He slouched forwards to set it upright and saw that as usual Bascia was looking at him. Her black eyes reminded him of ripe berries in the Stanmore hedges. She tilted her head in a gesture of invitation.

Carlo ignored his antics with the hamper. He pulled down his cap to cover his eyes and stalked away. Devil understood that he should go after him and try to set matters straight, perhaps even apologise if he could bring himself to do so. There would not be much of an act without Carlo, whereas the dwarf could always find another front man. But instead he matched Bascia’s head tilt with one of his own. The warmth of a woman’s body would obliterate Gabe more effectively than brandy ever could.

There was a cupboard in an angle of the dim corridor that led between the dressing rooms and the stage. He took the girl’s hand and they slid into the cramped space. The opening bars of Heinrich’s and Lucie’s waltz scraped the air as their mouths met.

Eliza paid the hansom driver, wincing at the size of the fare. She hurried down the alley beside the theatre and she was at the stage door when the dwarf flew out. He almost collided with her but before she could stop him or call out his name he whirled past and raced towards the Strand. She watched him go, then seized the opportunity to step in through the open stage door. She blinked in the yellow light. The air was redolent of sweat and smoke and there was a hollow echo of stamping feet in the distance.

‘Yes?’

A man seated in a cubbyhole looked at her over his newspaper. She recognised the doorman who had bundled them into the street on her first visit to the theatre.

‘Mr Wix. I am here to see Mr Wix.’

The man’s grin showed his teeth, or the place where most of his teeth had once been.

‘Box office round at the front of house, ma’am. I believe there may be some seats available for this performance. Just a handful.’ He laughed at his own wit.

Eliza had no intention of negotiating with this person. She marched past the cubbyhole and into the warren of tight corridors and wooden stairways at the back of the stage. A foreign-looking man tried to push past her as Carlo had done, but she caught him by the elbow.

‘I’m looking for Mr Wix.’

‘Good luck,’ the fellow almost spat. He shook off her hand and strode to the stage door. She pushed her way deeper into the theatre. The din of stamping feet now mingled with boos and jeers. A space opened in front of her, except that space was the wrong word for this wild muddle of strewn clothing, trunks and boxes, dismembered chairs, fragments of mirror perched on ledges strewn with face powder, empty bottles, discarded boots, and half-dressed performers jostling for room to clothe themselves. From behind a screen with a broken leaf emerged the soprano who had closed the show on the night she came with Jasper and Faith. The woman adjusted her bodice as a slatternly creature tugged at her laces.

‘That will do,’ the singer snapped and pushed the dresser aside. She took a long pull at a tankard, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set off at a tipsy angle towards the stage. From the opposite direction came a ragged shout of mocking laughter mingled with louder catcalling. Eliza was about to appeal to the nearest performer for Devil’s whereabouts when she saw him emerge from a doorway. A dishevelled girl sidled in his wake, accompanied by a faint tinkle of silvery bells.

Devil saw her and his face changed.

‘Miss Dunlop? Eliza?’

Eliza kept her head up. ‘I have an idea to discuss with you,’ she said. ‘When it is convenient.’

Before he could offer a response they became aware of silence spreading through the dressing room. Heinrich Bayer had appeared with Lucie in his arms. His face glistened with tears. The performers stood awkwardly aside to let him pass as he carried the doll to her velvet nest. Eliza went to him, putting her hand on his sleeve.

‘What is wrong? Can I help you?’ she whispered.

Heinrich leapt away from her. He began the work of folding the rubber limbs into their niches. He wept soundlessly as he leaned over to smooth the doll’s hair and kiss her forehead. Lucie’s glass eyes gazed up, void of all expression. Devil came to his side.

‘They are all fools, Heinrich. Ignorant, stupid fools. Make Lucie ready and we’ll go.’

The other performers gave up their staring and turned aside to occupy themselves as Grady burst in on them. Hands in his pockets, belly jutting, he glared at the room.

‘That was the worst of the bad. You, Bayer, and your dancing doll. Don’t trouble to come back tomorrow.’

Heinrich was trembling, but he had stopped weeping. Lines deepened in his worn face. He closed up Lucie’s trunk and fastened the catches, then positioned himself in front of it.

‘You should please pay me for tonight’s performance.’

Grady made a sound like rending fabric. ‘Not a brass farthing.’

‘We danced for your audience. It is not Lucie’s fault nor mine that they did not appreciate the artistry …’

‘Bloody artistry. Entertainment, that’s what I want. And I’m going to get it from the rest of you if I have to whip it out of you.’ The man’s sausage finger jabbed at the silent onlookers.

Devil could suppress his hatred no longer. He dived at Grady and grasping his hands round his thick neck he shook him as hard as he could although the manager’s bulk barely rocked. Behind them somebody, perhaps the coarse comic, gave a low-voiced cheer.

‘Pay him what you owe or I will kill you,’ Devil growled.

Grady’s eyes were watering. He coughed, ‘Is that what you are, Wix? A killer?’

Through the fog of his rage Devil glimpsed the dark figure again. He blinked and it was gone, drawing his strength with it. His hands fell to his sides.

‘Pay him,’ he muttered.

‘You can get out of here, as well. You and the dwarf. And stay out.’

The same voice muttered. ‘It’s them as are bringing in what audiences you do get, Mr Grady. Knock ’em out and you’re done for.’

Grady cursed. He caught sight of Eliza at Heinrich’s side.

‘Who are you?’

‘A friend of Herr Bayer’s.’

‘A living woman? Indeed? Backstage is for artistes only, madam.’

Jacko Grady adjusted his straining waistcoat and stalked away.

‘Let’s go,’ Devil muttered to Heinrich Bayer and Eliza chose to believe that she was included in the command. As they left the room there was no sign of the dishevelled girl although Eliza believed she heard an accusatory jingle.

‘Where d’you live?’ Devil demanded of Heinrich when they reached the Strand. The Swiss gave an address not far from the coffin maker’s workshop.

‘It’s a fair step, but I’ll walk back there with you,’ Devil sighed. ‘Miss Dunlop, how did you come here? May I find you a cab, perhaps?’

She gave him a look. ‘I will come with you. As a matter of fact the idea I hoped to discuss with you was originally Herr Bayer’s, so this is quite opportune.’

Devil sighed again. He was disgusted by his failure to get the better of Jacko Grady over Heinrich’s money. Getting the better of Jacko Grady was becoming as important to him as the success of Boldoni and Wix, and it was infuriating that the success of Boldoni and Wix was dependent for now on staying with Grady and the Palmyra.

Heinrich Bayer was already walking, trundling ahead of him the cart with Lucie’s trunk strapped to it, seeming too unhappy to care whether or not he was alone. He looked utterly beaten, his shabby coat overlarge for his thin body. Devil and Eliza flanked him and they moved through the late evening crowds of swells and revellers and street hawkers that surged to the steps of theatres and saloons. London seemed all glitter and celebration, with poor Heinrich Bayer the frayed figure at its brass heart.

They walked in silence, occupied with their separate thoughts. Devil’s pace was purposeful and Eliza could only reflect on the differences between this journey and the earlier stroll though Hyde Park. Jasper was forever holding back and taking her arm, asking questions as if he was trying to work his way into her head. Devil was bracingly indifferent to her presence. Eliza was excited to find herself out in these vivid streets with the crowds washing past her, not knowing where she was going or what lay in store.

Beyond St Clement Danes there were fewer people. Street lamps shone on empty stretches of cobbled road and the wheels of Lucie’s cart clattered in the sudden stillness. The dome of St Paul’s was pasted black against the sky as they turned to the north of it, skirted the heaving city within the city of the meat market, and headed deep into the warren of Clerkenwell. When they finally reached a recessed doorway Heinrich looked at them as if surprised to find that he had company. But he nudged the door open and led them down an internal alleyway to unlock another door, a low entrance leading into a darkened mews at the rear of some forbidding building. They stepped over the threshold in his wake and waited as he lit a candle.

‘Oh,’ Eliza said in astonishment.

The room was little more than a barn, but it was not a barn that either she or Devil could have imagined. It seemed as much a charnel house as a laboratory. On a bench lay the lower portion of a leg, the limp flaps of its rubber skin partially peeled back to expose bright metal rods within. On a clean square of cloth a row of silvery instruments, small tweezers, pliers and screw clamps was neatly laid out. A brass microscope occupied the end of the bench, and next to that stood a metalworker’s lathe with coils like tiny locks of metal hair littering the floor beside its clawed iron feet. A foot and a hand, each with a piston shaft protruding from the severed joint, rested on a smaller table. This much the light of the single candle revealed as Devil and Eliza silently stared around them. The recesses of the room were hidden in shadow but there was an impression of other implements, tall cupboards, and more strange work in progress.

The centre of the room, where the candle glow was brightest, was occupied by two chairs. In one sat a female doll, wide-eyed, her hands resting in her lap. Her flaxen hair was tied back from her slender neck. Her lower body was clothed in petticoats but she was naked from the waist up. Her breasts were unmodelled protrusions of pallid rubber. Next to her sat a manikin on a square pedestal, an expressionless Chinaman with a round black hat and long, drooping moustaches. With his triangular yellow face he looked like an illustration in a child’s picture book.

‘Excuse me, Miss Dunlop. My work …’ Heinrich murmured. He wrapped a shroud of cloth around the torso of the female doll.

‘I believe Miss Dunlop did mention that she is employed as an artists’ model,’ Devil put in.

Heinrich frowned, evidently distracted. The candle flame flickered.

‘We need more light,’ he said. He pressed a bell push and Eliza thought she heard a distant peal. Heinrich busied himself with Lucie’s trunk and a moment later a knock announced the arrival of a servant, in this strange room a surprisingly conventional figure in a dark dress and white apron. She brought in a lamp and placed it on the bench.

‘Good evening, Herr Bayer. Shall I light a fire? Will you be wanting some dinner?’

Eliza’s eyes met Devil’s. His eyebrows rose in black circumflexes but she could see that he was intrigued rather than repelled by this macabre place. The shadows of the room were barely dispelled by the lamp, and dread seemed to linger just out of her sight. A tremor of fear ran down her spine.

Heinrich laid Lucie on a cushioned surface that appeared to Eliza something between a bed and a catafalque. She shivered at the spectacle.

‘Yes. Some dinner,’ Heinrich said vaguely. He shook out a fine paisley shawl and let the folds drift over Lucie’s face and body. The resemblance to a catafalque was heightened.

‘Shall I lay up a table over in the house, sir?’

‘Perhaps we could stay here.’ Devil put in. ‘I think this is where our business will lie.’ He sounded quite at ease, with a purposeful note under his light tone, and Eliza wondered how he achieved this in so bizarre a setting.

Heinrich waved his hand. Whenever his attention returned to them he seemed startled to discover that he still had company.

When the servant had withdrawn Devil strolled to the bench. He picked up a watchmaker’s glass and screwed it into his eye, then examined the dismembered leg. Next he inquisitively turned the bezels of the microscope.

‘Whose place is this, Heinrich? Do you work here?’

Heinrich sat down on a stool, then jumped up again and offered the seat to Eliza.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and sat. She was beginning to feel weary.

‘I work here, yes.’

‘For whom?’ Devil persisted.

‘What? For myself, of course. My interests are not so usual. I am a maker of automata.’ He gestured towards the flaxen doll and the Chinese manikin. ‘But you know that much, Mr Wix. You are acquainted with my beautiful Lucie.’

There was a small silence.

‘I thought you were a poor man, Heinrich, like me. If you are rich, as it seems you are, why have you and Lucie danced every night for Jacko Grady and his audience of barbarians?’

Heinrich was still wearing his ruined coat, with his frayed shirt collar protruding. His boot heels were worn to wafers and he looked as if he had not eaten a meal in the last week. Eliza longed to ask the same question, but she would not have had Devil’s boldness in coming straight out with it.

Surprisingly the Swiss smiled. The deep lines in his face vanished and for a moment he looked a younger man. ‘I am not rich. My family have been watchmakers at Le Locle in Neuchatel for three generations. I am the last son. My care is not for watches, but in what I do there is the same precision. The same love for a device that is intricate, ingenious, unique. I am a craftsman, Mr Wix, not a banker. What is money?’

‘I could tell you,’ Devil said bitterly. The note in his voice made Eliza look at him with attention.

Bayer said, ‘I dance with Lucie at the Palmyra because I want the world to see her. There has to be a debut. A London debut, in your popular music hall. I hoped – expected – this would quickly lead to better things. But, sadly, it seems not. We are disappointed of course.’ He shrugged his thin shoulders. It was clear that his brilliance as an inventor was not matched by his knowledge of the world. ‘The worst of it all is the insult to Lucie. This evening, I am afraid, I was unable to hide the pain it caused me.’

Eliza was filled with sudden pity for him which only intensified her discomfort.

The servant came back with a young boy to assist her, and together they unfolded a card table and set three chairs around it. On the bench they laid out a china tureen and some covered dishes with a tray of cutlery and glassware.

‘Will there be anything else, Herr Bayer?’

‘I don’t think so, Mrs McKay. Or, wait a moment. Perhaps some wine?’

‘Thank you. Yes,’ said Devil with distinct emphasis.

A bottle was brought and uncorked. Devil and Eliza helped themselves to soup from the tureen and thick slices of ham with potatoes. The food was plain, but plentiful and good. Devil drank a glass of wine straight off. Heinrich took a few spoonfuls of soup but he soon left the table and went to the Chinaman sitting on its plinth next to the yellow-haired doll. He reached behind it, and its head suddenly flopped sideways with a gasp of exhaled air that sounded like a human sigh. Eliza jumped and her spoon clinked in the bowl. The creature’s hands rose from its lap and its head jerked upright with another hiss. The fingers flexed and its mouth opened and closed to reveal two rows of porcelain teeth.

‘You see?’ Heinrich said.

‘I do,’ Devil replied. He put down his spoon and fork in order to concentrate on the inventor.

‘He is operated by a system of compressed air cylinders, controlled from here.’ Heinrich indicated a notched drum with a handle, a simple enough mechanism that reminded Eliza of a barrel organ.

Devil remarked, ‘He’s of a size with Carlo Boldoni. But this fellow is more biddable, I’m sure. Tell me, Heinrich, what is your creature for?’

The inventor frowned. ‘I made him. His existence is sufficient reason in itself. But I thought I might have him tell ladies’ fortunes? One shilling a time. “Mr Wu knows the secrets of a woman’s heart, and will answer the questions you cannot ask.” Look at this.’ He turned a handle and one of the Chinaman’s hands drew a spool of paper from the opposite sleeve. ‘What is a fortune? You or I could invent a fine one.’ Heinrich laughed then, a creaking sound of rare usage. Eliza found that the palms of her hands were damp.

Devil’s concentration intensified and his forefinger rubbed slow circles in the green baize surface of the card table.

‘Do you play cards?’

‘I am a busy man, Mr Wix. No, I do not.’

‘Please call me Devil. If I had friends that’s how they would know me.’

Jasper is your friend, Eliza silently corrected him. Why had Devil obliterated the Hector of their shared boyhood?

‘I wonder if Jacko Grady plays cards,’ Devil mused in the softest voice. The Chinaman’s hands descended and once more lay inert in its lap as Heinrich wandered away to his bench. He took up the half leg and held it suspended by its metal arteries.

‘Have you ever heard of a false automaton?’ Devil asked.

Heinrich did not look up. These questions bored him.

‘Of course. Who has not? Even Mr Grady spoke of such a thing. But why would I be interested? They are the province of …’ There was a pause while he searched for the word. Not tricksters, or even conjurors. ‘Illusionists.’

‘Exactly.’ Devil’s smile did not reach his eyes. He poured himself another glass of wine to rinse down a large mouthful of ham and potato. Only when he had cleared his plate did he turn to Eliza.

‘Tell me, what drew you back to the elegant and acclaimed Palmyra theatre this evening, Miss Dunlop? Eliza, that is. That is how I think of you.’

He thinks of me? She only nodded. ‘How is Carlo’s poor face? I was not able to ask about the damage when I saw him earlier.’

‘Probably for the best. He would have bitten off your head, if you had done so. Yes, he is mending quite well although he complains enough. You came to the theatre to ask after him?’

‘No, not for that reason alone. As I said earlier, I have an idea. You recall the suggestion Heinrich made when we were leaving the tavern that evening? That you should perhaps have a woman in your act?’

Summoning his patience Devil nodded. ‘And you agreed with him.’

Eliza said, ‘I enjoyed the Philosophers illusion, of course. But so much gore? And to tell the truth, the play as a whole did not appeal to me in the way it would have done had there also been a female role.’

Heinrich returned to his automata. He rested his fingertips on the shoulders of the flaxen girl. ‘Nor to me,’ he agreed.

‘Ah. You would prefer a female philosopher. Really?’

Eliza looked at her surroundings. Surely nothing she could propose in such a setting would seem outlandish? ‘You are laughing at us, Mr Wix. The role would not necessarily be a philosopher. The time will come for novelty, don’t you agree? I was envisaging a more – what? – feminine scenario. A comedy, perhaps. Disappearances, clever materialisations, mistaken identity, laughter closing with a kiss.’

‘If I knew any Shakespeare I would say that is what your idea sounds like.’

‘Why not?’ Eliza laughed.

‘And who do you suggest might play this female role, Eliza?’ Devil’s mouth was curling.

‘Not Lucie. I could not agree to that. But Hilde, here,’ Heinrich cried. ‘When she is finished.’

Eliza said, ‘I am an artist, and a model. I have always dreamed of acting, and I do not think it would be such a big leap to make.’ Seeing Devil’s face she protested too quickly, ‘I’m not a fool, you know. You might at least let me try. I will even write you a comic playlet, if you like, and you can tell me what you think of it.’

‘That sounds delightful. I am obliged to you. But you are overlooking the sad fact that the Palmyra is owned and managed by Jacko Grady. I have no control over his programme, and I don’t believe your tender comic playlet will appeal to his low audiences.’

‘That is true,’ Eliza acknowledged.

‘If I were the owner and manager, it would be a different matter. A sparkling comedy of illusion? Of course. The best tricks Carlo can devise? Certainly. Maybe Heinrich might assist with the engineering of the devices? My stage would be a perfect showcase for Lucie, also. Who knows what fame she might achieve?’

A silence fell.

Between them Devil and Eliza had wiped the plates clean of the last crumbs of food, and the wine bottle was empty. Devil still traced circles on the green baize with his forefinger.

‘What is inside your Chinese fortune-teller, Heinrich?’

‘Inside him? The mechanisms, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Devil stood up. ‘It is late. You have been hospitable, Heinrich. Thank you.’

Heinrich put out his hand. ‘We don’t see many people, Lucie and I. We enjoyed our excursion the other evening with you, and Miss Dunlop and her friends. And you refused my money at the end of it, which doesn’t happen often. It was also kind of you to notice my distress tonight and to walk all the way home with us. Therefore I believe the thanks are all due to you.’ With the strange, sidelong look that Eliza attributed to shyness he shook Devil’s hand.

Once they were outside in the Clerkenwell alley Eliza realised how late it was. She was thoroughly relieved to be out of Heinrich Bayer’s domain, but the eeriness seemed to extend even to here. There was no sound, and few lights showed in the nearby tenements and warehouses. Damp clouded the air and muffled their footsteps as they hurried to the corner. Devil asked where she was going and she told him.

He said, ‘I have to go only to Holborn, but Bayswater is too far to walk. What shall we do?’

Another two turns brought them closer to Smithfield where there was still torchlight and a sullen clatter of activity around the market. A dejected hansom stood at a corner, the horse’s head hanging low and the driver dozing under his greatcoat. There was nothing for it, Eliza realised. Two cab rides in one night, and no money left over. At least she had gained a square meal, although the eeriness of Herr Bayer’s workshop had depressed her appetite.

Devil followed her thoughts. He was embarrassed that he could not even pay for the girl to ride home in safety, when he would have wished to drive her to Bayswater in his own brougham.

‘It is all very well for Bayer to say, Vat is money? as if he were royalty. It is always people who have plenty who profess their lack of interest in it. I will get some very soon, and then I will allow myself the luxury of dismissing its importance.’

Eliza thought of the afternoon’s walk through South Kensington. It seemed a long time ago.

‘Jasper was saying earlier that he intends to buy one of those fine white stucco houses with eight steps up to the front door. He will have a man in livery to open the door for him too, no doubt.’

‘My house will have ten steps. And my man will have a finer set of whiskers than Jasper’s man.’

They burst into laughter.

As they reached the hansom and Devil was holding open the door for her he asked, ‘How long have you been walking out with Jasper Button, Eliza?’

‘I am not walking out with him.’

‘I think you are.’

He handed her up the step. The sad vehicle reeked of tobacco.

‘Will you consider my idea?’ she persisted. ‘About the role?’

‘When I own the Palmyra theatre, I promise I will do so.’

‘When you own it?’

He stood back from the door, his black face hard under the brim of his bowler.

‘Yes. What else did you imagine?’

He touched his hand to his hat and the driver whipped up the old horse.

FIVE

Eliza recalled the backstage realm at the Palmyra theatre as a chaos of casually naked limbs barely concealed by dressing screens, where discarded or not yet assumed costumes gaudy with feathers and sequins hung in wait for the strutting performers. It was a swarming, hectic and self-absorbed space stinking of perspiration and gas fumes, stale beer and face paint, where a half-consumed dinner of bread and cold beef lay on a table under which a bucket of piss stood in plain view. In her waking hours she mulled over the thrillingly disreputable vigour of all this, and the trapped din of the unseen audience reverberated in her head along with the jingle of tiny bells.

But when she slept, it was different. When she slept she became one of the performers. Amongst these creatures, who like a series of violently coloured butterflies had managed the transition from humdrum world to stage glamour, she grew wings and flew, she spiralled in dances, she sank in an exaggerated curtsey to acknowledge the roar of applause.

When she woke up from her dreams, she felt dull.

To be an artists’ model had in her own estimation seemed daring, and she had certainly shocked her father and stepmother – this Eliza always found pleasant to contemplate – but now she realised that her own notions of what it was to reject proper behaviour were in themselves staid enough. Up until now she had felt fairly satisfied with the precariousness of her existence, but her spirits sank when she contemplated the stale routines of the day that actually lay ahead. A languid class in watercolour painting at the Rawlinson School did not compare with the seamy adulation she was offered in her dreams.

At this point, with an inevitability that was becoming familiar, her thoughts would turn to Devil Wix. If she wished for closer acquaintance with the theatre, surely it was Devil who could lead her to it? It was true that he had dismissed her barely thought-out suggestion about a female role, but – characteristically – she would not allow that to deter her. Eliza considered matters. The first strategy was to earn Devil’s approval, and his gratitude if that were possible. She must find a way to direct paying customers to the box office in the Strand.

To this end, after the next life class, instead of leaving immediately once she was dressed and Mr Coope was out of the room, she lingered for a few minutes to talk to the students. Charles Egan and the others were delighted with this opportunity and they were soon established in a semicircle, with the young men’s coats slung aside and their feet hooked up on chair rungs. Ralph Vine laced his fingers behind his head and tipped his seat at a reckless angle. Even Miss Frazier hovered within earshot. For her own part Eliza was enjoying the stimulating contrast between her nakedness of half an hour ago and the polite cadences of the present conversation.

She began by asking them, ‘I wonder if any of you have seen the new variety show at the Palmyra theatre?’

‘That old place?’ Leonard Woolley shook his head. ‘My father used to go to concerts there. It has been closed for years.’

‘Indeed it was closed, but it has recently reopened as a variety hall. It is not much better than derelict even now, but you should go and see the magic act. The illusion is called the Execution of the Philosopher. I promise you, Mr Woolley, you will not believe your eyes.’

‘Whatever you command, Miss Dunlop. May I persuade you to come with me?’

‘Thank you. I have already seen the performance,’ Eliza smiled at him. Some of the young men were languid and others were bumptious. None of them had interested her, even before her visits to the Palmyra and Herr Bayer’s studio.

When she arrived for the next class Leonard Woolley and two others were quick to announce that they had followed her instructions and enjoyed a visit to the theatre.

‘It’s a rough sort of place, though. Who took you along there, Miss Dunlop, may I ask?’

‘My sister and her husband.’

‘Not your young man?’ Ralph Vine slyly murmured.

‘I don’t have such a thing.’

‘I saw you walking in the park with a chap who looked as if he’d like to be.’

Charles Egan mocked him. ‘You might like it too, Viney, but that doesn’t necessarily make it happen.’

‘What did you think of the Philosophers illusion?’ Eliza persisted.

Mr Woolley whistled. ‘Top-notch, I have to say. I was astounded. Cutting off his head, you know. A strange person in the row in front of us nearly screamed her own head off. The trick is a waxwork of course. But how is it done?’

‘I couldn’t reveal any details.’

‘But you do know? How come? Do tell us. I love theatrical illusions. They have such a primitive appeal.’

Everyone was interested now. Miss Frazier paused in the adjustment of her smock ties.

‘I know in principle. I am acquainted with the performers.’ Eliza couldn’t resist the little boast. There was another whistle.

Ralph Vine said, ‘Are you? Dark horse, Miss Dunlop. Gentlemen, who apart from me has not yet seen this fascinating show? I propose we put matters right tomorrow evening.’

All the male students went in an exuberant group to the Palmyra. Eliza crossed her fingers that Devil and Carlo would give their best performance, but she could come up with no reason for going to the theatre herself. She returned to her lodgings in Bayswater instead. After eating the usual dinner in the company of her two fellow lodgers she left the beef-coloured downstairs front room and withdrew to her bedroom. Laid out beside the oil lamp on the table in the tiny bay window were two quires of blank paper acquired at an advantageous price from the clerk of supplies at the Rawlinson School.

Eliza sat down, picked up her pencil and turned over the pages. She sighed as she did so, but she persevered. The playlet she had envisaged, an airy confection of lovers, a duenna, and cupboards into which people disappeared before comically tumbling out through a different set of doors, remained obstinately buried inside her head. She had tried for several evenings in succession but however hard she stared at her paper before pressing the lead pencil into its creamy whiteness, the actual words defied excavation. Who would have thought the business of writing could be so difficult? She knew the character she would play, had planned her elegant costume and even the way her hair would be dressed, but how did one make any of this happen?

‘Good evening, Charlotte,’ she wrote, the first line to be uttered by the lover, a role that would necessarily have to be taken by Devil Wix.

‘Good evening, sir.’

Was that really all she could manage? The noise of the Palmyra’s brutal audiences in likely response to this insipid exchange was all too easy to conjure. Eliza gnawed her lip and screwed up her eyes until the sheet of paper faded to a fuzzy grey rectangle, but the pencil obstinately refused to move. She listened to her upstairs neighbour’s footsteps as they passed overhead, from the washstand to the wardrobe and back again. Miss Aynscoe was the overseer of an atelier specialising in fine beadwork and embroideries for ladies’ clothing. She was so poor that her own garments seemed worn almost to the point of transparency, and the sparse evening meal provided for them by their landlady was probably the only food she ate all day. But then Miss Aynscoe lived within her means. Eliza did not, and she was perfectly well aware that her small capital would not last for ever. Or indeed, much beyond the next year. But what was the point of being alive, she reasoned, if everything were to be planned for and measured in advance? That was the way Faith and Matthew lived, and it did not appeal to her.

She shifted her position so that she sat more perfectly upright. It was tempting to let her eyes lose their focus, even to drift into the reverie of her hours of posing – for all her energy, this state of suspension always beckoned her – but there was work to be done. Why would a pair of lovers tumble into separate cupboards? To escape from the duenna, perhaps. How would the cabinet interiors conceal and then reveal their contents? Whose advice should she seek on these technical matters? Not Devil’s, she instinctively knew that. Carlo Boldoni’s, perhaps. At the prospect of this collaboration the tight wire that ran between her shoulders loosened a little. Frowning like a schoolgirl, Eliza wrote a few lines of dialogue that she hoped were tender and sprightly.

Reports of the show at the Palmyra circulated at the Rawlinson. The young men visited it a second time, recruiting more of their friends to accompany them, and on this occasion they continued with a long night in and out of the drinking parlours behind the Strand. Someone had narrowly avoided being arrested after snatching a bobby’s helmet, someone else had fallen asleep on a porter’s barrow in the fruit market and had only woken up when the man threw him off in favour of a few bushels of pippins.

‘Viney, poor Viney proposed marriage to a young lady who sat on his knee for an hour and whispered her dark spells into his ear,’ Charles Egan crowed.

This riotous evening rapidly became a totemic event for the whole group, and as a result they adopted the Palmyra and the Philosophers illusion in particular as their badge of dishonour. Ralph Vine swept through South Kensington in a long black cloak like Devil’s, and the others started calling him Socrates.

Devil had told Jacko Grady that if there was to be no place for Heinrich Bayer in the company there would be no Philosophers either, and Grady had reluctantly agreed to include him again. Now a rival student coterie struck back by proclaiming their admiration for Bayer and the amazing Lucie. Two of them came to school wearing an approximation of his old-fashioned evening clothes, and one persuaded his fiancée to dress up like the doll and smile fixedly to the applause as they waltzed over the black-and-white tiles of the entrance hall.

As a result of this exuberance more and more of the Rawlinson School’s students and their friends began to make their way to the Strand, and now they sat through the entire show as a collective demonstration of their commitment to understanding (prior to rejecting) the broadest spectrum of public taste.

A young polemicist from the sculpture school wrote an article entitled ‘Art and Every Day. Static Gallery versus Mobile Music Hall’ for a pamphlet that was read by some of the professors. As a result of this, Raleigh Coope and his current best protégé, a versatile young man of artistic promise, took two seats in the front row at the Palmyra to see the Execution of the Philosopher.

And at the end of the next life class Eliza was surprised when Mr Coope unrolled a sketch for her attention.

It was a lively pencil drawing of Devil in his robes, holding up Jasper’s waxwork head of Carlo Boldoni.

‘It’s a very strong likeness,’ she murmured.

Raleigh Coope waved this aside. ‘Mr Gardiner knows how to draw.’ Unlike some of the present company, he might have added. ‘He is much more interested in the subtext, the way that the piece subverts the biblical and classical mythologies. There is a subject here, Miss Dunlop.’

‘Yes, I see.’ Eliza did not think mythological subversion had been Devil and Carlo’s first intention.

‘If you are acquainted with the performer, you might enquire whether he is interested in sitting for Mr Gardiner?’

‘Yes, Mr Coope.’

‘The show has its slender merits, as Mr Gardiner has noticed. But it lacks an audience. The house was half empty on the night we visited. Doesn’t the management know how to attract paying customers?’

‘It seems not,’ she had to say.

A development which Eliza could hardly have foreseen now took place at the art school.

Attached to the back of the building was a mews and in this more humble environment – where the windows were not so tall, the north light less plentiful and the heating governed by economy – another establishment was housed. It had been set up as a philanthropic gesture by Professor Rawlinson himself and it was dedicated to the teaching of what he and Raleigh Coope chose to call commercial art.

‘For all the world,’ Charles Egan had once scornfully remarked, ‘as if that were not a contradiction in terms.’

The students at the secondary college were boys and young men who possessed a degree of artistic talent but did not aspire to become artists, and were in any case from poor families unable to afford the much higher fees at the school itself. Those applicants who were fortunate enough to be selected were taught by expert practitioners the techniques of signwriting, illustration for manufacturers, magazines and catalogues, and even of constructing models and mannequins for display purposes. Once they were Rawlinson trained, they easily and quickly found employment. When Eliza told Jasper about this he had sighed enviously.

‘If only I had known of such a school when I was sixteen years of age.’ Jasper’s own studies and apprenticeship had been hard, although easier to endure than his childhood in Stanmore.

Mr Coope had a fondness for lively and ambitious young men and he diligently involved himself with the curriculum of the technical school. One afternoon he addressed the class of illustrators and signwriters on the use of art as a means of selling goods.

‘How might you employ a visual image to encourage a purchase?’ he asked them. This was not a question he would have put to Mr Egan and his cohorts, who were paying for the chance one day to be able to write RA after their names.

‘By making a positive association?’ someone attempted.

‘Yes. Very good.’

The group dutifully discussed the possible combination of sturdy oak trees with health-giving patent medicines, and of portraits of beautiful young women with face creams. Mr Coope swallowed a yawn. Mr Gardiner and his enjoyment of the Philosophers illusion crept into his head and he was thinking idly of the Palmyra theatre’s rows of empty seats as he asked his class, ‘What if it were not a commodity to be sold but – say – an event?’

There was some more tedious discussion, this time of handbills and posters.

A red-haired boy at the back of the room raised his hand.

‘You could do the opposite, couldn’t you?’

Raleigh Coope arched one eyebrow.

‘I mean, sir, by not telling the people too much but in some way making them want to know more?’

‘Please go on.’

The boy’s face flushed as bright as his hair.

‘Sir, if I’m lectured over and over about, I dunno, who is going to preach in church on Sunday and if I have to listen to parson telling me what I have to renounce so as to save my soul, with my ma always reminding me even on a working day, then I starts saying to myself, I don’t care. But if it’s kept a secret, say, what really will get me to heaven, then I’m going to try my hardest to find out, aren’t I? It’s only natural.’

The rest of the class was tittering but the boy said defiantly, ‘Well, I am going to. It stands to reason.’

‘You have an idea there, Mr Cockle. Continue with it,’ Coope said. The boy’s forehead furrowed as he thought even harder.

‘So, if I wants to get people to come to my meeting perhaps I’d leave a hint they can see everywhere, not giving away so much but making them feel hungry to find out more. The idea is they will be worrying inside their noddles, “Am I going to miss what he’s got? Whatever it is?” ‘The boy jabbed a paint-splotched finger at his grinning neighbour.

Coope clapped his big hands. ‘Make them hungry, as you say, and whet their appetites further by filling the air with the scent of a fine roast.’

‘But folk will be disappointed when they get no pig at the end, wun’t they?’ someone muttered.

Coope looked over the rows of faces, many of them clearly familiar with what it felt like to be denied roast pork. He was a sympathetic man and he wished he had chosen his words and his example more adroitly, so he hurried on.

‘Here is an exercise for you.’

He had thought of setting them to the lettering of a handbill, but the young man with the unfortunate head of hair had accidentally come up with a more interesting proposition. So out of a moment’s embarrassment and otherwise acting on an impulse, Raleigh Coope began to tell them about the Palmyra theatre and the want of an audience for what he privately judged to be a music-hall turn. It was an audacious and well-executed turn, it was true, but it was mostly George Gardiner’s enthusiasm for it that had fired his own.

‘What might you do to bring in an audience, using a visual image, gentlemen?’

There was a long, baffled silence. Too audibly someone scratched his head. Then, slowly, the red-haired boy raised his hand.

‘Sir?’

Devil left the stew of alleyways and trudged out into Holborn. December’s bitter wind made him hunch his shoulders and clench his fists inside his tattered pockets. His belly rumbled with hunger and with the less easily assuaged pangs of general dissatisfaction. He was thoroughly tired of sharing his lodgings with an irritable dwarf of eccentric habits. Maria Hayes’s demands were intensifying according to the length of time that Carlo spent under her roof, and her husband had begun to glare at Devil with dull coals of suspicion in his eyes. Reaching a street corner, he hung there with his chest hollowed against the gusts as he tried to decide where to go. There must surely be a tavern nearby with a fire, and a landlord who would take his promise in exchange for a tot of brandy?

But no such place came immediately to mind so his steps tended southwards, towards the Palmyra.

In the distance in an angle of two walls, splashed over sooty brickwork, he saw a painted palm tree. The size of it – three feet tall, if it was an inch – and the insolent brightness of whitewash against the dingy background were what caught his attention in the first place. But then it came to him that its outline was entirely familiar because it was a crisp stencil-cut version of the palm that crowned the theatre pillars. The same palm motif had been taken as an ornament for the head of Jacko Grady’s playbills and posters and it also adorned the theatre’s programmes.

Devil splashed through the mud to examine it more closely.

The whitewash had been applied haphazardly through the outlines of a stencil held up against the wall. Trickles ran down from the curved leaves and dribbled from the base. It was clearly fresh. Devil ran his thumb over a section of the trunk and scraped the brick beneath. The whitewash was only just turning grey with wind-blown dust. He walked on and passed a dozen more palms. As he drew near to the Strand he noticed arrows in the same whitewash, painted over walls and lintels, on steps and on the stones underfoot, all of them pointing in the direction of the Palmyra. People hurried by, but Devil estimated that most of them bestowed at least a wondering glance on trees and arrows.

He reached the Strand. Here another much bigger arrow pointed from the street towards the theatre entrance. A ragged street sweeper prodded his broom at it.

When Carlo arrived for the matinée Devil asked him what he thought of this proliferation of palms. The dwarf shrugged.

‘Grady’s doing?’

Devil thought this was highly unlikely. ‘Grady? You mean, he’s had a selling notion and then paid to have this done? Or is there some third person involved? Someone we know nothing about?’

The dwarf shrugged again. He and Devil were constantly at odds, chafed by too much proximity and downcast after a run of poor houses.

‘Ask him, if you’re so interested.’ He swung away and took the philosopher’s wig out of its box. The horsehair was matted with grime from its excursions beneath the stage.

Devil never spoke to Jacko Grady unless it was impossible to avoid him. He undid his buttons and took off his shirt, ready to put on his costume. Next to him the soprano was preparing for the stage by gargling and spitting linctus into a tin bowl. From her other side Bascia darted Devil a thin, complicit smile of disgust.

The next day there were more palm trees, a white forest of them waving all across Covent Garden as far as Trafalgar Square. Devil saw a man stop walking, turn in his path and follow with his eyes the direction of an arrow. That night there was a somewhat bigger audience, and the atmosphere of expectation amongst the crowd raised the quality of the performance. There were some Rawlinson students present, and the Philosophers received by far the longest and loudest applause. Grady intercepted Devil and Carlo as they came offstage. His thumbs were tucked into the pockets of his grease-blotched waistcoat.

‘What is this, Wix?’

‘What is what?’

‘The trees.’

The bustle of the wings might not have existed. Prickling with antagonism the two men appraised each other. From the belligerence of his question Devil understood that Grady was concealing suspicious alarm, and so most probably was not behind the strange multiplying of whitewashed palms. This did not reassure him. It could only mean that some other individual threatened to intrude, one who might be more devious and therefore a more formidable rival than greedy Grady.

‘I have no idea,’ Devil blandly countered, hoping to convey that he did. ‘The question is – is it criticism or applause?’

Grady’s mind was working, but the labour did not bring forth any explanation or a reason to blame Boldoni and Wix. He contented himself with a generalised thrust. ‘You need to get up some new material. Use the rigmaroles from your audition. Cards, memory, vanishing. Your box trick will be stale by next month.’

‘I don’t believe it will, but to offer you some of our astonishing new tricks will be a great pleasure.’

The cabinet was carried offstage and they followed it, leaving Grady at his vantage point. As soon as the stagehands deposited the piece Carlo pressed his ear to the mechanism that controlled the hidden doors.

‘The hinge is catching. It takes a full second longer for the door to spring. You might pay more attention to the act, Wix, and less to your personal ambitions,’ he grumbled.

‘You heard the audience tonight. My ambition will pay off, and then perhaps you will appreciate what I have been trying to do.’

‘No one will ever appreciate you as sincerely as you do yourself.’

Devil ignored him. The dwarf’s carping pessimism and sense of his own importance were irksome, but whenever he thought of reclaiming for himself his lodgings and his act – the two halves of his life, because he had nothing else – he was forced back to the bare truth that he needed Carlo more than the dwarf needed him.

‘Ten per cent of every house more than eighty per cent full,’ he murmured. ‘Tonight we were three-quarters sold.’ The ribbon of gold that had shone so enticingly in Devil’s dreams at the beginning of the enterprise had drooped and grown tarnished, but in recent days it had started to glitter all over again.

‘New hinges,’ Carlo bared his wolf’s teeth. ‘Tomorrow.’

Heinrich Bayer passed with Lucie in his arms, her unmarked satin slippers skimming an inch from the floor. She had a new costume, a narrow skirt of heavy oyster-coloured silk worn over a high bustle in the latest style. But it was the other automaton, the manikin glimpsed in Bayer’s studio, which occupied Devil’s thoughts.

He was going to need Carlo’s cooperation for a trick much more difficult to execute than the Philosophers illusion. The dwarf would have to be kept sweet.

‘Tomorrow, my friend, of course,’ he agreed in a voice as silken as Lucie’s gown.

If the fine art students were piqued by the apprentices’ appropriation of their theatre, they did not retaliate by withdrawing their support for it. Stark black cloaks became the preferred costume for a certain section of the house, and each night the swoop of the executioner’s blade and the crash of the head into the basket were greeted with a louder roar. The severed head’s words from the black depths of the cabinet carried a whispering echo as twenty others mouthed them from the stalls. With the warm swell of approval buoying him up, Devil’s snapping of the sword blade and plea for forgiveness found a real pathos that even Carlo could not fault. The smoke coiled with devilish effect in the flashes of blue and silver gaslight that were now, with long practice, perfectly synchronised. The bitter cascade of gold coins at the end drew a storm of applause.

The Execution of the Philosopher illusion had reached its point of perfection. Word of mouth spread from the students to their friends, their families, and their friends’ friends and families. The palm trees had caused their own stir, and there had even been a picture and a teasing paragraph about it in the London Illustrated News. For an entire week the number of seats sold was greater with each successive night. Devil quickly concluded that the rumbustious youths who had taken to attending performances in costume were also in some way responsible for the street decorations. So long as the business was not a plot of Jacko Grady’s, he did not much care what young gentlemen mysteriously did with their time and money. As patrons of the Palmyra went they were on the harmless side, and therefore more than welcome.

Two nights before Christmas Eve, two hundred people took their places for the evening performance.

‘Two hundred,’ Devil repeated to Carlo as they waited to take the stage. Perched on his stilts, with the wicker cage supporting his gown, the dwarf’s enlarged shoulders nudged his. Devil added, ‘I may not have a Varsity man’s head for mathematics, but I do know that figure represents eighty per cent of capacity. I am looking forward to seeing Jacko Grady’s face.’

‘You think he’ll give you the money, do you?’ Under the make-up Carlo’s face was flushed and his eyes glassy.

‘We shall see,’ Devil said simply.

At the end of the show the place where Grady sat to hand out the performers’ shillings and pence was taken by his deputy, a terrier of a man who wore his hat tipped on the back of his head like a bookmaker.

‘Two hundred seats,’ Devil growled when the man passed him the usual two shillings and sixpence.

‘What’s that?’

‘Eighty per cent capacity. Tonight Carlo and I get ten per cent of the takings.’

Grady’s deputy sneered. ‘Next,’ he called to the waiting line and waved Devil and Carlo aside. Devil planted himself squarely in front of the table and leaned over the man.

‘Ten per cent. According to my contract, signed by Jacko Grady.’

‘Take it up with Grady, then. Next.’

Devil’s fist smashed down, sending a little pile of coins rolling.

‘Contract!’ he shouted.

‘You can roll up your so-called contract and stick it up your arse. So far as I am concerned,’ the man said. Devil grabbed him by the coat lapels and hoisted him out of his seat. Coins spilled all over the floor and the other performers catcalled and jostled as they snatched them up. The deputy’s legs feebly kicked in the air and the table overturned.

Carlo sadly shook his head.

‘Won’t help,’ he sighed.

‘Give us our money,’ Devil snarled into the man’s face.

‘Not mine to give,’ the other retorted. Recognising the truth of this Devil slammed him back into his chair and took up the rickety card table as if he were about to joust with it. Impatience at the delay began to ripple down the queue. Devil poked the legs of the table at the deputy’s chest.

‘Tell Grady. I want my money. Tomorrow.’

‘Tell him yourself. Next, I say, and look sharp the rest of you if you’re wanting to get paid tonight.’

Devil dropped the table on the deputy’s feet. With the man’s yelp of pain to console him he stalked away and Carlo followed. Outside it was bitterly cold, with clots of wet snow swirling through the sepia glimmer of the street lamps. In silence they began to trudge towards Holborn but Carlo walked so slowly that Devil gave up the pursuit of his own furious thoughts to look round for him. The dwarf pressed his hand against a leprous wall for support as he coughed and spat the product into the gutter.

‘Are you ill?’ Devil asked him.

‘Yes.’ Carlo was too tired even to attempt a sharp retort.

Devil sighed. ‘Come on.’ With their heads down they trod the familiar way back through the alleys to the lodging house. When they reached the attic room it was hardly warmer than outside. The squalor of it struck even Devil after he had lit the lamp. He looked around at the mounds of props and boxes, the unswept boards and dirty pots. Carlo’s white doves sat in their cage, reproachful black eyes on Devil. He stirred up a fire and the dwarf sank into his blanket. He drank the toddy that Devil mixed for him and then lay in a piteous huddle. He closed his eyes.

‘This is how our Sallie went,’ he murmured.

‘You’re not going anywhere. Except to the Palmyra theatre.’

Carlo only shivered.

‘We are about to make our fortunes, my friend. Two hundred seats sold, remember.’

‘I want to sleep.’

Devil lay in his bed and listened for most of the night to the dwarf’s feverish tossing and turning. In the morning Carlo’s face was hollow and his eyes were sunk in their sockets. Devil let him rest and went out to buy food that Carlo could barely pick at. As the time approached for them to make their way to the theatre Devil fussed from bed to table, peering at the small heap of skin and bones under the blanket and praying that the dwarf would at least get up from his bed. He was hardly able to hope that he would actually be able to perform. At the last possible moment Carlo dragged himself upright. He coughed fitfully and lurched to his feet.

At the foot of the stairs Maria Hayes was waiting for them. She raised her thick eyebrows.

‘Compliments of the season, ma’am,’ Devil murmured. Carlo moved like a shadow behind him and Devil believed he could feel in his own bones the shudder of a suppressed cough. The landlady would welcome a sick dwarf even less readily than a healthy one.

‘Rent is owing, Mr Wix. For two occupants.’ Her voice was like ice in a bucket.

‘And it will be paid this very evening, Mrs Hayes. Boldoni and Wix are becoming quite the spectacular success, as you know.’

Devil had taken care to present the landlady with a pair of tickets, and she and her husband had duly visited the Palmyra. For two or three days thereafter relations had been cordial, even admiring, and Carlo had been tacitly accepted as a lodger even though none of the Hayes family ever spoke to him. But when the rent was overdue Mrs Hayes was immune even to Devil’s persuasions.

‘This evening.’ She turned the phrase into a threat, her mouth as yielding as a cut-throat razor. She withdrew into her quarters.

As they walked up the alley Devil grimly said, ‘Carlo, we have to work. Tonight and every night. Otherwise’ – but there was no need for him to say what otherwise would involve. It lay hungry all about them in the ruined houses, even in the meagre shelter beneath market carts, and for the unluckiest in corners where the sleet-laden fingers of the wind dug a little less keenly.

Carlo looked up at him. For the first time in the long weeks since they had met he seemed fragile. Usually his tiny frame was springing with energy but tonight his neck seemed hardly strong enough to bear the weight of his large head. His cracked lips barely moved when he spoke, and he still winced.

‘I know.’

He was brave, for such a scrap of a man. Devil felt an urge to pull his cap down and wrap his ragged muffler closer about his throat for him, but these signs of tenderness embarrassed him. He touched the dwarf’s shoulder instead, quickly withdrew his hand and turned towards the Strand.

The audience were already taking their seats. In anticipation of the Christmas holiday there was a hum of good-humoured anticipation rising through the auditorium. Devil put his eye to a chink in the curtain. More than two hundred in tonight, that was certain. As soon as the show was over he would force Jacko Grady to an accounting. He made this decision and then put it aside in order to give all his mind to the performance.

Carlo looked like a death’s head as Devil led him out into the lights. A cohort of costumed philosophers in the cheaper seats roared at his appearance. The familiar moves of the playlet began. In the third row he was surprised to see Eliza Dunlop’s face turned up to 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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