Luciana and Charley practised in the harness and with the magnesium for the rest of the afternoon and into the following day. The first time she lit the bracelets, Luciana was so fearful she thought she might faint clean away. Charley stayed by her side the whole time as they did that part of the trick over and over again. Luciana was determined not to let her fear win, however hard her heart beat every time the matches struck. After all, her grandmother had been right about at least one thing. Luciana had beaten her fear of fire once, and whatever had brought it back, she knew she could beat it again. They worked so hard that by the time Merritt and Clara began to get ready for their own evening performance, both Luciana and Charley were in sore need of a rest.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?” Charley suggested, as he and Luciana headed backstage. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with some fresh air.”
They went down to the river, the noise of the city evening bubbling all around them. When they reached the Thames the tide was in, the inky water lapping high against her greasy banks. The river curved away in both directions, wide and deep, oily and dark, festooned by the myriad lights that lit buildings on both sides of the water. They reflected on the waves, watery sparks of yellow and white, rippling like fleeting magic. The river smelled of filth and salt, but she looked beautiful, enchanted.
Charley sighed.
“What is it?” Luciana asked.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about our futures and about belonging. I’m trying to imagine going back to the attic room in Midford now. And actually, I … can’t.”
She was surprised. “But you’ve been trying to go back home since we got here.”
“I know. What about you? Can you imagine it?”
Luciana thought back. It was only a few days since she’d last woken in her own bedroom, and yet it seemed so much longer. She tried to think of exactly what she had done with her days before coming to London, and couldn’t remember a single significant thing.
“No,” she said. “I can’t either.”
Charley nodded, staring down at the water. “We’ll have to go back though. Won’t we? Or … you will, anyway.”
A cold knot formed itself in Luciana’s heart. “What do you mean?”
“Sitting up there in the rafters, I’ve had a lot of time to think,” he said. “When this is over, you’ll go back and look after that big old house. But I need to get a job. And I think I’d rather do that here than in Midford.”
“You’re going to stay in London?”
Charley shrugged. “I know people now – I’m friendly with Ben, and there’s Timothy Fervent. Clara and Adeline, even. They’ve all got lives here. Maybe I could make one too. What have I got back in Midford except a bedroom I share with my mother and a job cutting grass for the vicar?”
Luciana stared down at the water and felt herself sinking like a stone, although it wasn’t the Thames that was swallowing her up, but the thought of her own future. What would she do in that big old house for all those endless days except wait until someone wanted to marry her? Then the house would become his, his name would become hers, and she would have nothing of herself left. She wouldn’t even have Charley. She supposed that this was what her grandmother had meant about different paths.
She couldn’t bear to think about it, so she stood up. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go and get some dinner. By the time we’ve eaten, the performance will be over. I want to rehearse some more before we go to bed.”
*
They got back to the theatre shortly after 10 p.m. The noise of angry voices hit them even before Ben opened the stage door.
“What is it?” Charley asked. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Mister Carl Thursby,” Ben whispered, his voice shaking. “He’s in a mighty temper. He’s in Mister Merritt’s dressing room, yelling blue murder, so he is.”
Luciana grabbed Charley’s arm. “He must have seen one of our playbills!”
“So what if he has?” Charley asked. “What can he complain about? That he’s not the only magician in town?”
“If it’s not that, then … what?”
The answer occurred to both of them at the same time. Had Thursby discovered Merritt’s true identity?
“Come on.” Charley led the way down the corridor towards Merritt’s room. As they got closer, snatches of shouted words made their way from behind the closed door.
“…a disgrace! It will not be borne! You pledged to uphold the agreement and now…”
They reached the dressing-room door. Charley raised a hand to knock but Luciana stayed his arm.
“…you will not even speak to defend yourself, sir!” Thursby finished.
Luciana opened the door. Inside was a tableau: Thursby, red with anger, faced an equally angry-looking Adolphus Merritt. Clara stood by, still in her stage costume and behind Thursby … stood Philpot Danvers. Luciana looked around each of them in turn before her gaze fell on Danvers.
“So it is true,” she said. “You are nothing more than a spy. My grandfather didn’t give you that puzzle box at all, did he? You stole it because you thought it held the Golden Butterfly.”
Danvers had the good grace to look away.
“Well, well,” sneered Thursby. “The prodigy who imagines she has a right to step on to the stage.”
“We’ve met before,” Luciana reminded him. “You ransacked my house on the day of my grandfather’s funeral.”
Thursby ignored her words, turning back to Merritt instead. “You have violated the trust of the Grand Society, sir, by allowing an unlicensed child to play at being an assistant. You have broken the most sacred of our laws and you will pay dearly for it.”
“What is it you’re really angry about?” Luciana asked. “That another Cattaneo is about to make a fool of you?”
Thursby spun back towards her again, his rage almost apoplectic. “You? Make a fool of me? Your grandfather was nothing but a charlatan, a half-rate trickster who would have done well to stick to touring with a grubby little circus on the Continent.”
“And yet you spent so many years searching for the Golden Butterfly, and in the end the only way you could get it is by stealing from a child. What sort of charlatan trickster does that make you, Mr Thursby?”
Thursby curled his lip back against his teeth. “You are nothing. You are not worthy of the breath I have already expended in acknowledging your existence. You will never step on to this stage again. Phipps has already been warned that if you do, he will be blacklisted from hosting any magician in this theatre, ever. As for you,” he said, turning back to Adolphus Merritt, “beyond these sins already enunciated, I have reason to believe that you are using a trick of dubious origin, one that seeks to mimic my own Golden Butterfly. You will show me its workings immediately. Only then will I, as the Grand Master of the Society, decide whether or not you can proceed with your advertised performance.”
“You have no right to demand that,” Clara said, angry. “There is nothing in the Grand Society’s Charter that says any magician must show you the workings of their illusions.”
“Silence, girl!” hissed Thursby. “Who are you to speak against me? And what would you know of the Charter anyway? I’d be astonished if you can even read your own name.”
“You still don’t know how it works, do you?” Charley asked. “The Golden Butterfly. You still can’t work out how to use it.”
“This is not so!” Thursby exclaimed. “It was I who designed it, you ignorant whelp, it is my greatest creation, and mine alone.”
“You are a liar,” said Luciana. “More than that, you are a poor magician. And by next Tuesday night everyone will know it.”
Thursby forgot himself in his rage. He raised his hand to strike Luciana across the mouth, but before he could a figure in black blocked his way.
“Strike a grieving widow and her granddaughter would you, Carl Thursby?” said Isabella Cattaneo. “Now, what would the papers say about that?”