Under the Poppy (13 page)

“You like this?”

Laddie groans against the straps.

It is far after midnight now, closer to dawn; yet the night seems to have lasted forever. Where is Istvan? On the town; on the road?
Trust you, messire?
His face, then; his eyes.
He adores you.
Does he? Jürgen Vidor seems to think so, Jürgen Vidor in a frightening mood, a peculiarly ugly and avuncular mood, enthroned there at the screened-off table as if the place was his:
Your welfare is of the greatest importance to me, Rupert. This unfortunate
contretemps
with the mayor
—

A tempest in a teapot. Mr. Redgrave was badly advised.

Whatever else he may be, he is the mayor still, and holds civil authority that we must respect.

Do you respect it, Mr. Vidor?

I do not like to see you compromised.

Always with him is that odor, that sour, ether whiff; does it come somehow from the man himself, his very skin? Rupert breathes through parted lips, carefully, so as not to smell it now.

Compromised in what way?

In any way. But especially where it concerns the military. Our situation here is soon to grow acute, and I would have you on safety’s side, always; you and the Poppy. But how can I promise this when your—colleague is so reckless?
Hand on his forearm as rigid as wood, as one of Istvan’s puppets.
The General and his men will be seeking lodging, a local headquarters. The Poppy could be that place, and how better guarded than by housing the guardians themselves? No one would trouble you then, you or your girls. And you would be more than fairly compensated, I would see to that myself.
That canine flash: his teeth are brown, like old ivory.
But in the current atmosphere, the General and the mayor would be at public loggerheads, embarrassing to both. So your puppeteer friend must first move on.

The straps creak with strain, Laddie whimpers like a child. Blood spots the sheets. “You like this? Eh? Eh?” as Rupert breathes through his mouth, stares at a stain on the wall, just above the picture of the boat on the sea.

He is not—mine to direct.

Not yours? Would he say that?
Those teeth again.
I think not. And Miss Decca agrees, his presence is disharmonious to the functioning of your house.
Decca? What the devil has she to do with it? or to speak with Jürgen Vidor at all? Yet troubled as she is with Istvan present, watching the both of them, feigning to want him gone, she might have said something foolish or untoward, something that Jürgen Vidor can make a weapon of, the way he does with everything, with everyone in his path—

Your house, Rupert. To do with as you decide.

—as his head turns, now, thin hair lank with pomade, gaze fixed on Rupert’s as the pin digs in, saying as plain as words with both instruments
This, look at this, this is you.

The moon is low; the Poppy is dark. A wind like a dying man’s sigh rises, pauses, falls to rise again. Istvan, hatless, brandy bottle in his pocket, investigates the lobby, the hallways, the silence behind the stage: only Velma there, patient with her mop, with whom he shares a weary little nod. Upstairs there are noises, a door closing on Omar’s mutter, Decca’s answer; Istvan turns his back, back out into the darkness, the sorrowful moonlight more sorrowful still in the noxious little alley so close to the jakes, below his own Cell, just beside the iron fire-ladder bolted to the bricks, extending only to the second floor but he is nimble, he has done this kind of thing many many times before, hand over hand like the boy he once was—

—and his boy’s instinct is correct, for there sits Rupert, shirtsleeves and whiskey, head sunk between his shoulders like a gargoyle’s on a church and “Hola, messire,” Istvan calls, softly. “What do you up here so late?”

“Not a God damned thing.” Rupert sounds drunk. “Want a drink?”

“I was about to take the temperance pledge, but if you insist.” Istvan sits beside him on the shingles, knees up, close enough to touch. From this vantage the view covers much of the town: the newly empty buildings, the trash fires in the streets, the soldiers clustered like roaches, hiding in cracks from the cold and “One needs whiskey,” Istvan breathes, after wiping his mouth, “for a sight like that. Not so very tidy, outside our little cocoon. Hey!” as Rupert’s arm swings backward, flinging, what, a stone into the street, at the closest clump of soldiers who swear and scatter, fire clumsy into the darkness at an enemy they cannot see. “What you doing, Mouse? They’ll plug us by sheerest luck.”

Rupert laughs. “Whose luck?” He
is
drunk, that stage of drunkenness where the compass swings from calm south to stormy east in a heartbeat, a minor puff of wind. “Theirs? Or yours?”

“Ours… Jesu,” tugging his coat closer. “It’s arctic up here.”

“Is it?” Rupert laughs again. “Have you been there, those frigid polar regions?” He takes back the bottle, drinks a punishing swallow. “Or should I ask, where have you
not
been, messire, in your long and illustrious career, with all your beloved fucking theatrical puppets?”

“I wasn’t here tonight.”

“No you were not. Although I looked for you.” He closes his eyes. The wind tugs at his hair. “I’m always looking for you, you fox. Cur fox…”

“You’re reversed, it’s I who look for you. Always. Everywhere.” Istvan’s voice is very low now. “It’s why I’m here.”

“Is it? Is that why you came to our charming shithole hamlet? For me?” Due east now, his fist white around the bottle’s throat. “Did you take one step out of your path for
me
, messire? Your trek across the Continent, playing for the crowned heads? Hanzel, and Dusan, and, what was the other? Marcel? The
bouffon du roi
, Marcel, yes. What other names are there, for all the things you did? Answer me!”

“Names are for armor. Or camouflage. Ask Ag.” They stare at one another in the darkness, two men, two boys. Rupert raises the bottle again, Istvan takes it from him: “Wait. Listen to me—”

“No, you listen to me,” but then says nothing more, eyes wide, staring at Istvan as if he has never sought another sight, as if he is blind and “I see many things, out there,” Istvan says, still more softly. One hand reaches, fastening on Rupert’s wrist. “One of them is war.”

Rupert is trembling hard, as if from the cold; he cannot feel the cold. “What war.”

“Here. They’re going to make war here, they’re going to burn this place to the dirt and trample the cinders without even taking notice. Because it is in the way, of Archenberg, and Gottsburgh, and all the places they mean to go. Because it is nowhere. And I want you nowhere fucking near it when that happens, you understand? I want you with me, out there—” pointing with his free hand, a gesture neither sees, they are staring into each other’s eyes.

“ ‘Out there,’ how? As before? When you—”

“I want—”

“What do you want,” shaking and helpless, now, as a puppet unstrung, all the old love rising up unstoppable as war, as the moon rolling cold above them, as the dawn on the cusp of that moon and Rupert says it again, he whispers, “What do you want of me,” but it is not a question and there is only one answer, given mouth to mouth, breath to breath, the taste of whiskey, of brandy impossibly sweet, crushed so close that they could be one skin, one beating heart in the cold that takes no notice of them, the cold they learned so long ago to defeat by the simple strength of heat, one body to another in the all-consuming dark.

Sun in the Cell, morning’s chill yellow light, Istvan wrapped in a grayish sheet, coaxing water from the ice crusted in the bedside jug. He drinks, then nudges with the cup the long body on the cot, Rupert rising on one elbow to swallow the rest. Their eyes meet, silent still with the normal enormity of intimacy so instantly resumed, as if no time at all has passed, nothing at all has changed, the two together in the piled detritus of strings and coffins and wooden eyeballs watching without comment, ready to resume the rigors of the day; even the talk resumed, last night’s murmured argument, whether to stay or “Leave?” says Rupert, voice rough, his hands clasped now between his knees. The lines at his eyes have gentled, his gaze is wide open, nourished and exhausted both. “You can; no doubt you should. For many reasons. But I have—”

“People, yes, I know. Like Omar, who’d make a capital man-at-arms in any man’s army, including his own. Or Jonathan, I could get Jonathan work in London tomorrow. In Brussels today! Or Lucy-Belle—”

“Or Decca. What will you do with Decca, messire? Set her up at a field hospital in this war you see coming? Put her in charge of the orphans?”

Istvan gives him a sour look, then, softened, sits beside him on the cot, brushes back Rupert’s hair with one hand. “All right then, stay. We stay. The merest while.”

“Stay how,” not asking so much as seeking, casting a way on cloven paths, that deep-set gaze on Istvan saying
I have known you, messire, for so very long, oh how I know you
—

—as Istvan’s smile in return is playful, rueful, joyful, reveling in that knowledge even as he marks its reach and “If you’re going to drown,” he says, “do it in deep water. So we must play our way out of this ditch, yeah?” Smiling lips against his ear, a whisper, a murmur as familiar as the mind’s own voice: “Mouse. Play with me.”

Rupert’s eyes close, his hand goes out. “No more now. No more of this—”

“Always more. Of this. This—”

By the time Rupert steps into the hallway, loose-limbed, it is late enough that Vera and Pearl are awake and quarreling, the wet smell of oatmeal rises from the kitchen, Velma, skirts tucked close, climbs sweeping up the stairs. She sees Rupert—did she see his advent as well?—and returns his nod, stolid and friendly, is she friendly? Silent with her broom and pan, more silent somehow even than Jonathan, at least with Jonathan you can see what he is thinking, his eyes hide nothing; hers show the same. Rupert continues down the hallway, down the stairs. Vera’s door slams hard, Pearl starts weeping. Velma tucks up pan and broom-handle, and rustles quietly away.

2.

It is by sheerest chance that he sees her at all, bedraggled stray peering out of her bolt-hole into the evening’s air. Evicted from the tailor’s backstairs lodging, the tailor’s common-law wife screeching
You fuck that mutt! I know you fuck that
mutt!
for the fortnight past she has been biding instead in this alley, hoarding what scant coins her work has gathered, knowing they will not outlast the coming cold. She has reached a point, Agatha, Decca, where each day melts into the next, one long morning of sour hunger, one longer evening of scuffling and failure in the dark. Sing, dance, play parlor tricks in the parlor of the streets, where the passersby fling stones or ignore her, or watch for free then walk away, or watch and then suggest other tricks and dances, other modes of more personal employ; and more and more she must sink that low, her dress stained brown to the knees, coin-purse fingers pinching at the pennies they let fall. Sometimes she fears dying, there in the alley, sometimes she thinks she is dying, and will never see her brother, or Rupert, again, though she has remained in this hateful place for that sole reason, that it is the last place she saw either, that either saw her. In the cold hours she wonders if they have ever looked for her; in the coldest hours she is sure that they have not.

But then her name, spoken in surprise:
Ag?
All in black, wool cap and seaman’s rucksack, she can barely believe what she is seeing, scrambling to her feet and into his arms before he can disappear, Rupert the miracle there before her in the street and
Ag,
he says again, gently setting her back an arms-length.
Jesu, don’t cling so, all’s well…. Are you well?
Looking at her more closely, now.
Are you hungry?

He feeds her, sausage pies and fried sugar-cakes, all she wants, and cup after cup of scalding tea; they walk together around the town square, so close to the lock-hospital that one can almost hear the shouts, then all the way to the road by the river that leads out of town, the road Rupert has just traveled coming in, coming back, why? She tries to think of how to safely broach the subject, him here alone, no Istvan, no puppets, could any of their quarrels be so final? but in the end he simply asks, himself: Have you seen him? Is he here?

His voice so offhand, dry, his eyes so naked, twin to that other cry, Istvan’s howl,
Ag where is he!
but
I do not know where he is,
she says, which is partially the truth: she does not know where Istvan is now, only where he said he might be, and who is to say that he would be there still? or where he might have landed?
He took Marco, and is gone.

Rupert says nothing for a moment, a long moment. Then blackly, bleakly:
And before he left—did he ask after me?

Before she speaks, she stares down at her hands, her chapped, cracked, slavey’s hands, dirtied from the alley, ground-in filth beneath her nails.
No. He did not.

Silence, then, as he looks away in such a way that she knows she must not speak again, the raw wound is bleeding, her own heart bleeds for him but what else can she do? One day she will explain, but now, today, this instant she is dying here, drowning in the cesspool of these streets. Together, they cannot need her; these empty years have taught her that. Apart, there is use for her, and sanctuary. And it is not as if she drives them from one another, they have done so, it seems, impossibly, themselves. Her brother will no doubt reappear someday as he always has before, in his own good time. In the meantime, she can help Rupert, be of aid to him, in ways her brother never could.

So when Rupert walks on at last, silent, she walks beside him, equally silent, together not into town but down to the quay, a shabby vessel called the
Queen Maritsa of Cathay
and
Did you go to Cathay?
she asks warily, the first words spoken in an hour, dreading the bob of the boat on the water but
Not so far,
he says.
Wait here a moment,
and back in the same with a larger bag her heart sings to see,
shouldering that bag as he steers her back toward town but after a few steps
You’re all in,
Rupert says, with distant pity, the distance of shock, the shock of great pain, but dizzy with her own pain’s relief she does not see, does not want to see, wants only to rest as he bids her, there on the quayside, tucked in a corner out of the wind, his heart against her back like the mothering sound of the sea. She sleeps then as she has not slept for ages, soundly, utterly, like an animal gone to ground at last. Holding her, Rupert does not close his eyes.

Of where he has been, he says almost nothing: no sailor after all, and no performer, either, just “traveling,” he says, and she must be content with that. Of Istvan they do not speak again, not even his name, though he is present, ghost as he is, far more thoroughly than Rupert himself, as their traveling now is less journey than mere motion, his attempt to outpace the loss, her determination to keep at his side, a shadow’s shadow tending his needs, bargaining and badgering for their food and lodging, as he provides funds in other ways. Once he returns from a day’s foray masked in red, fresh blood that she wipes away in silence, dressing the gash on his scalp, the hard scrapes across his cheeks; that night their pockets are full.