Reign of Beasts

T
hey called me Boy back then. The spruikers, the stagehands, the tumblers, the columbines, the songbirds, the masks. Even the other lambs of the crew, the ones who were younger than me. If I had a real name, it was long forgotten.

Madalena called me Baby. That wasn't my real name either, but it made me feel special. I would sit on her dressing table, swinging my legs, while she painted her face with cosmetick and told me stories of the old days, of the Pearls Beyond Price, of the songs they used to sing. I'd stay with her for hours, the only one who wanted to listen, the only one who didn't whisper behind her back about how she was pushing forty now and maybe it was time for a new stellar to take her place. I didn't care about any of that cack.

Oyster wasn't much of a town. What do you expect from a place called Oyster? It was shellfish, shellfish and more shellfish. Folks came from all over to buy crab and mussels and, oh aye, oysters from our pier. Most families in Oyster had a boat, or crewed a boat, or were waiting for a place on a boat. The rest of them shucked the oysters or worked the market. The whole town smelled of salted shell.

Then there was the Mermaid. She was an old musette, peeling paint and shabby curtains, but she was ours, and she was famous, even more famous than the shellfish, to the right kind of people. They came from all over to see the show, though only in oyster season.

We were the lambs from the Mermaid. We didn't have to go to school, not even in summer when the musette was closed because the oysters went bad too fast for us to pull decent audiences. Every young cove and demme in town wanted to be us. We didn't stink of fish. Just cosmetick grease.

Only the luckiest lambs in town got a chance to join the troupe. The stagemaster took on one or two every season, and half the time they wouldn't make it through â they'd rip a costume or drop a piece of scenery or prove to be no good at the tumbling and gurning between acts. The failures would be booted out swift as you like, out of there, back to the life of boats and markets and shellfish that was all Oyster had to offer them.

I was seven years old when I heard the name âAufleur' for the first time. It was the month of Fortuna, nearly winter, when the oysters are their sweetest and meatiest. I'd been sent out to fetch supper for the stagemaster and when I got back, Madalena was having one of her turns. I could hear the screams from the street.

As soon as I stepped backstage, I was seized by a mob of columbines, all spindly arms and fluffy tulle, but surprisingly strong.

âHere he is!'

âIt's the Boy!'

âWhere have you been?' barked the stagemaster. âGet up there, lamb, she listens to you. Talk some sense into the daft old haddock.'

I was pushed and shoved up the rickety steps to the stellar dressing room. It stank of gin and lime. Madalena had turned to her favourite activity in dark times â
destroying one of her costumes. This was, I happened to know, her least favourite frock, with a murex fringe that made her look like a reading couch. She ripped it with savage glee, her false fingernails breaking off under the strain.

âRaddled, am I?' she screamed as I closed the door. âPast my prime?'

âDid they say that?' I asked in a low voice.

âMight as well have! They want Adriane to play the Angel at Saturnalia. That's my role! The stellar role. They're raising her up to replace me!'

I'd heard rumours, of course. Whispers in the props room and the ticket booth. Madalena had too many years under her jewelled brassiere for anyone who knew how to count, and everyone knew that Adriane had been in and out of the stagemaster's office at odd hours, emerging with her hair all messed up and her knickers showing.

Aye, I knew what that meant, too. I was seven, not stupid.

No one had said to my face that Madalena's star was falling; they wouldn't, knowing she was the closest I had to a mam. I still heard the whispers. I wasn't going to be the one to break Madalena's heart, so I lied to her, bare-faced lie after lie, about how the Mermaid was nothing without her, no one would buy a ticket without her there, how she looked better than Adriane anyhow, and audiences liked a demme with meat on her bones.

Hard work for a seven year old, but I'd been born and bred to the stage, and there are no better liars than mummers or masks. I'd been around the crew long enough to know the book by heart.

Madalena let me soothe her with my borrowed words, this time.

A few days later, when the stagemaster announced to the cast that Adriane would play the Angel, Madalena bit her lip so hard it almost bled. We all braced ourselves for a new
bout of screaming, but she said nothing, just bowed her head and let it come.

There was no bigger audience than the Saturnalia crowd. We always put on a special show from the Ides of Saturnalis through to early Venturis, because the house would come from as far away as Aufleur, the city to the north, and Bazeppe, far south. Some of them were brightly dressed Lords and Ladies, making a kind of pilgrimage to our town to eat our oysters fresh with creamy mayonnaise. They were still licking their fingers and dropping the shells as they paraded into the Mermaid.

It was the same show every year: saints and angel, harlequinade, pantomime with saucy songs, and cabaret of monsters. I always figured the last one was why the stagemaster was ever on the lookout for more lambs, because it was us who performed it, done up in animal costumes and pretending to be fierce. It was a game, like everything else about Saturnalia: a festival of topsy-turvy. I sometimes think that was why Madalena gave in on the Angel role. She must have feared people might see her as another Saturnalia joke â the ageing dame pretending to be an ingenue.

It was the Kalends of Saturnalis and I was in the streets with Kip and Benny, pasting up the broadsheets for the show, when his Lordship came upon us. He was beautiful. No other word for it. I'll never forget how beautiful he was. His face was soft like a demme's, and he had long hair all hung about his shoulders. He wore a high top hat like the fancy toffs who'd pay three silver ducs to see the show from a private box, even though everyone knew the view from the dress circle was better. He had a long coat, and wore a chain at his throat. I couldn't figure if he was a theatrical or a genuine toff, and was so busy trying to work it out that I stared at him too long and Kip elbowed me in the side.

âAre you young seigneurs from the theatre?' he asked, and we preened, all three of us, to hear him saying âtheatre' about our lowly musette.

âAye, sir,' said Benny, and Kip nodded along. I kept staring.

He smiled, and no matter how highborn he sounded, I knew in that moment he was an actor. Just another mask looking to sell a performance.

âIs it a good show, your Saturnalia revue?' he asked next.

Kip and Benny fell over themselves to get out the usual patter: âYou won't see anything like this in your big city, squire; folks come from all over to see it; don't you know our columbines were trained by the Duchessa of Bazeppe herself; don't you know our cabaret of monsters act has been stolen by every musette north of here â¦'

He tired of the gabble eventually, and turned to me. His eyes were deep like coloured glass, all green and blue and maybe yellow if I looked hard enough. âWhat do you say?' he asked.

âThere isn't better,' I said, my voice coming out clearer than I'd expected.

The Lord smiled. âExcellent to hear. You had best introduce me to your stagemaster, then. I wish to arrange a private show.'

The day after the Kalends is ill luck for a first performance. The columbines complained, shrill gulls that they were. The masks weren't much happier, but they knew better than to make a flap about it. Adriane wasn't feeling safe enough in her Angel costume to make a fuss, and Madalena stayed quiet for once. No shrieking; she just watched the rest of them hop about.

The stagemaster quelled all complaint with one short speech. âThis mad toff has forked over enough shine to see the ceiling refurbished twice over. There'll be spare for a meat dish a day and new costumes this winter, so shut the fuck up about it.'

There was plenty of salt tossed around backstage to keep what luck we had left all in the right places.

We started with the cabaret of monsters, us lambs peering through our masks as we sang, trying to make sense of our audience of one. His Lordship sat smack in the middle of the dress circle and watched us hard, like a cormorant waiting to snatch a fish out of the water. He sat through all four acts and never clapped once. We did pretty well, I thought, though Adriane was so nervous she tripped over her pearl-crusted hem and sang half her notes too thin. Madalena did her best with her smaller part as Mother Sospita, with only half a song and a dozen lines to speak. At least the stagemaster had the grace not to push the role of Ires the Crone on her.

At the end, when we were all arrayed on stage waiting for some sign of approval, his Lordship stood up and leaned over the balcony. âDo it again,' he said in a chilly voice. âOnly this time, the one with the voice will play the Angel.' He pointed directly at Madalena. Adriane looked as if she had been slapped. His Lordship turned and climbed the next set of stairs to the gods, the seats so high that we rarely sold them out. Those who liked a cheap ticket preferred the pit, where they had to stand but at least they could see whether the tumblers were coves or demmes. He sat up there, chin in hand, as we went through the entire performance again, act by act. Madalena sang her heart out, the performance of her life, every gesture aimed skywards at her handsome benefactor.

Days after that, we learned the true story of what his Lordship wanted of us. We were going to Aufleur. To this day I don't know how much his Lordship paid, but I know it was enough to make the stagemaster sweat and stutter like it was his first audition as he explained it to us.

The Lord had hired us, every mime and painted prop. For the first time in twenty-five years there would be no Saturnalia revue at the Mermaid in Oyster. Instead, we
were to perform at a theatre in the city, a city so large that most of us could barely imagine it. A private performance.

Instead, we were taking the show to Aufleur.

Madalena was beside herself with excitement. She queened it over the masks and columbines, secure once more as the stellar of the company. Adriane made several visits to the stagemaster but he wouldn't budge. The Lord's coin pouch meant more to him than anything she kept in her cotton knickers.

I'd never been on a train before, nor had the other lambs. Me and Kip and Benny and Ruby-Red and Liv spent the whole journey staring out the windows, dizzy with the strangeness of being outside Oyster, let loose in the world.

We piled off at the other end, staring at the sight before us, the high dark buildings and domes, the finery of it all. Aufleur. The big city.

The Vittorina Royale had been a fine theatre once, there was no doubting that. But it had been abandoned for years. I still remember the crestfallen look on Madalena's face when she realised the grand city stage she had been imagining was just as old and rundown as the Mermaid. But then we walked inside, through the house, and Benny tugged my arm, pointing up at the ceiling. I swear I stopped breathing for a moment â I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. The ceiling was all mirrors and gilded saints, and when the lanterns were lit it gleamed above the stage like a sky full of stars.

âShe may be getting on in years, but she's a queen worthy of the best,' his Lordship said, and Madalena simpered at his words.

I suppose you've noticed I never named him. Back in Oyster he'd told us he was âLord Saturn' â the same as the saint of revels. Seemed unlikely, but no one in theatre has the name they were born with.

âWhere's your bean crown, then?' Ruby-Red had asked him cheekily.

âLeft it in my other coat,' he'd replied, pulling a face and making the young ones laugh. Such a quick tongue, that one.

We moved into the Vittorina, making her our own, figuring out the ropes and tunnels and secret corners. We had less than two market-nines to pull the Lord's show together and we sweated to make it happen. The ill luck from our last performance dogged us. Props broke, costumes were lost, and it turned out that Aufleur had some daft law that restricted horses and wheeled vehicles during daylight hours, which meant we had to transport everything we owned across three districts in dodgy hand carts.

Matthias fell sick, a hoarse cough that racked his body and took his appetite. That left us without a merchant's son, and the stagemaster lined up the lambs, demanding that one of us take his place.

âBaby should do it,' said Madalena.

âThe lad's not eight yet,' the stagemaster said in disbelief.

She stretched and smiled. âHe has the voice of a princel, if you give him a chance.'

Madalena was so much happier here than she had been back in Oyster. She really thought this was her big break, her dream come true, singing to fine toffs in a city instead of in our own little musette back home. I missed the smell of salted crab and the sound of the sea.

The stagemaster reluctantly agreed that my pipes were up to the role of merchant's son, but I was too short to fit Matthias's costume so he made Kip do it instead. I tried not to care too much. There would be other roles. I minded more that Madalena was head over heels in love with the toff who called himself Lord Saturn, and she was going to get her heart broke clean through.

Her dressing room at the Vittorina Royale was no bigger than the one back home, though it had fancy giltwork
around the mirror, and I caught her gazing around sometimes like the room was a steak dinner. Something to be proud of, rather than something she'd been tossed by a cove who only wanted to impress some other lady.

Oh, aye. There was another lady. Of course there was.

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