The Magnificent Lizzie Brown and the Devil's Hound

“Two hundred and seventeen,” Lizzie Brown said, sighing loudly.

The cow she had just counted looked up at her through the pouring rain and chewed thoughtfully. The bright gold paint on the side of Lizzie's circus wagon declared her to be “THE MAGNIFICENT LIZZIE BROWN, Mystic Wonder of our Age!” and “Unmasker of the Notorious London Phantom!” Rain hammered the wagon now as if the heavens were trying to wash away all traces of her former glory.

Right now, Lizzie felt about as magnificent as a soggy sock. Circus life was so intense and exciting when the shows were on that you somehow forgot all the traveling you had to do. It was like falling from a brightly colored trapeze into a tub of cold, gray porridge.

Nora and Erin, the Incredible Sullivan Twins, were taking the bad weather in stride. They sat at the front of the wagon, taking turns with the reins. The horses pulling the wagon were a temperamental new pair who would be performing with the twins, so the girls were doing their own driving for a change. They softly sang Irish folk songs together to the rhythm of the jolting caravan. Lizzie didn't know the tunes, so she'd decided to count cows.

“What in the world are you doing that for?” Erin asked.

“It passes the time,” said Lizzie with a shrug.

And what a lot of time there was to pass. Fitzy's Traveling Circus had been plodding its way through mile after mile of North London countryside for hours now. Lizzie was sick and tired of quaint stone bridges, sullen young men on haycarts, and groups outside village pubs staring at the circus as it went past.

Good manners don't cost anything
, Lizzie remembered her ma saying back when she'd been alive. Clearly all those folks rudely watching them hadn't learned that lesson.

A shout came from the head of the convoy: “Kensal Green up ahead!”

Thank goodness
, Lizzie thought.
That's our next location. We can stop soon.

Although this was the first time the circus had returned to London since Lizzie had joined a month ago, it didn't feel like coming home. Most likely it never would.

London held too many ghosts for Lizzie. Memories of her father's fists, of hunger and begging on the streets, came back to her. Her pa had nearly broken her arms more than once. Sooner or later, in one of his dreadful drunken rages, he'd have broken her neck. That was the way stories like Lizzie's ended in the London slums. Fitzy had saved her from all that, and she'd never forget her debt to him.

The circus had brought her happiness like she'd never known, filling her heart as well as her belly. Compared to the horrors of the London slums, this endless rain was a small price to pay, especially since she had friends like Nora and Erin to huddle up with. The long journeys might be dull sometimes, but she'd never go back to the life she'd had before.

Lizzie had run away from Rat's Castle, the slum where she'd grown up, only to find a new home among the colorful strangers of Fitzy's Traveling Circus. Fitzy had taken her on as a fortune-teller's assistant, only to discover that he had a genuine fortune-teller on his hands.

When her strange powers had first shown themselves, Lizzie had been more surprised than anyone. All that supernatural nonsense turning out to be true? It didn't sit right with her, but she couldn't deny it.

All her life she'd had vivid dreams that often came true, but she'd always dismissed them as coincidence. Ironically, it was while the old fortune-teller, Madame Aurora, had been teaching her how to fake a reading that her powers had shown themselves. Nowadays, she could see people's futures just by looking into their palms.

Lizzie's gift was her living now that she worked at Fitzy's. People paid well for a reading from the Magnificent Lizzie Brown. The sign on her trailer was no idle boast, either. She really had revealed the true identity of the fearsome Phantom, the masked burglar who had terrorized London. It had been the first — and so far only — victory for Lizzie and her crew of crime-fighting circus friends, the Penny Gaff Gang.

“Easy, Victoria!” Nora said, as one of the beautiful black horses pulling their trailer whinnied and tossed her head. “It's only a cow.”

“What's Kensal Green like, Lizzie?” Erin asked.

“Never been,” Lizzie said. “Heard there's not much there, though. Railway, canal, a few streets of houses.”

“As long as there's people to put on a show for, that's what matters,” Nora said.

Lizzie peered ahead, to where dim shapes were coming into view through the misty rainfall. “Are we at the site yet?”

“We must be!” Erin said.

There was a row of trees just off the road, and as they drew closer, Lizzie saw it was the fringe of an enormous park. White stone buildings showed through the trees. The rain brought out the sad, sweet smell of cypresses.

Nora whistled. “Look at all the lawns! Smooth and flat as a billiard table! I can't wait to set up there!”

“Must be a park for rich folks. Fitzy knows what he's doing. You two beauties will be paid for in no time, won't you now?” Erin said to Albert and Victoria, the two midnight-black horses pulling the caravan. Lizzie had never seen more beautiful creatures in her life. Fitzy hadn't been able to resist them and had bought them on credit, risking a huge amount of money.

“We're passing it,” Nora said. “Why aren't we heading off the road?”

“Because that ain't our site,” Lizzie said.

“Are you sure?” Erin said. “How would you know?”

“Because,” Lizzie said grimly, “it ain't the sort of place for a circus to set up. It ain't even a park.”

“So what in the world is it if it's not a park?” Erin said.

Before Lizzie could answer, a set of gates came into view. With the sound of jingling harnesses and a clop of hooves on stone, a strange procession emerged from the rain and began to pass through the park gates. A gentleman wearing black and carrying an ebony cane walked in front with a slow measured tread and downcast eyes.

Two gigantic black horses followed, decked out in harnesses as black as their coats. Tall feathery plumes rose from their heads like jets of ink. They were pulling a long, flat carriage that was overflowing with white lilies. The flowers were startlingly bright against all the black.

In among the soaking flowers lay a long, dark casket. Erin and Nora instantly crossed themselves, superstitiously warding off evil in the presence of a dead person.

“It's not a park, it's a cemetery!” Erin exclaimed.

“Kensal Green Cemetery,” said Lizzie, feeling uneasy and proud at the same time. “Those white buildings are tombs. Goes on for miles.”

“I've heard about it,” Nora said with a shudder.

“Everyone has,” Erin added. “The stories they tell . . . oh, I hope we're not setting up anywhere near. My skin's crawling just looking at it.”

The funeral procession went on and on. A host of mourners, women in veils and gentlemen in top hats, passed by with their heads bowed. Many of the women were weeping, swabbing at their eyes with black silk handkerchiefs. The circus people at the front removed their hats respectfully as they passed.

Angry glares were the response. The mourners didn't want to see jolly circus caravans going past. Lizzie heard some of them grumbling: “Couldn't they have taken a different road?” and, “How could they? A circus? The vulgarity of it!” One woman fainted dramatically and had to be revived with smelling salts. Lizzie felt awkward and shifted uncomfortably.

“There's no need for that,” Nora said. “It wasn't our fault that we were on the road at the same time as them.”

“Rich folks,” Erin snorted, as if that explained everything. “Think how much that funeral must have cost! Everything tricked out in black silks and satins all for some poor soul who can't even see it!”

Lizzie felt a stab of pain right under her ribs. When her mother had died, there had been no money for a funeral. There hadn't even been a coffin. Someone had come and stitched Ma up into the long white sheet. Her father had yelled at Lizzie to stop sniveling, but she'd cried anyway. Then her mother had been bundled onto a cart, driven through the streets, and lowered with ropes into a hole in the ground. There were other white bundles down there, strewn with earth, and other families crying.

That was all her mother got. A pauper's grave, without even a gravestone to mark it.

The year before, her brother, John, had died from phosphorus poisoning. Matchstick factory workers often went that way. Lizzie had saved up some money for some flowers, but her father found it and spent it on alcohol. John was buried the same way. Another muddy pit and a few mumbled words from a priest who had no idea who any of them were.

Lizzie had tried to find the graves since then, but it was hopeless. There were no grand marble monuments for the dead of the London slums. They were just thrown away like garbage.

Lizzie's caravan was passing the funeral procession now. She looked straight ahead.
I won't give you the satisfaction of rolling your eyes at me
, she thought.
You don't know what I've been through in my life.

Victoria whinnied and shook her head. She clattered sideways for a moment, as if a horsefly had bitten her.

“Easy, girl!” Nora said, alarmed. Many of the mourners turned to stare as she struggled to calm the mare.

The casket passed through the cemetery gates. At that exact moment, Victoria reared up. Her hooves waved in the air. Someone in the crowd gave a cry of fear.

Gasps rang out as Erin leaped from her seat onto Victoria's smooth back. Hanging on with her legs, she stroked the horse's long mane and whispered into her ears until the animal seemed calmer.

Lizzie stole a quick glance into the cemetery and saw the casket making its way up a slope toward an open grave, where a crowd was waiting.

“Wouldn't look if I were you, Lizzie,” Nora said.

“Why not? It's only a load of rich folks.”

Nora lowered her voice. “There's something in Kensal Green Cemetery you don't want coming after you. Victoria's got wind of it.”

Lizzie laughed. “Get out of here.”

“Didn't you see how spooked she was?” Nora insisted.

“She just got worried by the big crowd, didn't she, Erin?” Lizzie said.

Still on the horse's back, Erin didn't reply.

Nora shivered and whispered, “They say that cemetery's haunted.”

“
They
say that about every cemetery,” Lizzie said scornfully.

“Not like this one,” Nora said. “Haven't you heard the rhyme?” She began to recite:

“Hide your face, my darling girl,
and run, oh run for home,
For around the stones of Kensal Green,
the Devil's Hound does roam.”

“Devil's Hound, my foot!” Lizzie scoffed. Her friends could be so superstitious sometimes. “It was the crowd that spooked her. That's all.”

“You think so?” Nora said. “Well, we'd best hope Victoria doesn't panic at her next sight of a crowd. We can't have her acting up like that on opening night.”