That was almost the last time I saw Jenny Pierce – in the flesh.
Fitzy dragged me along the hall, down the stairs and into the warren of passages at the back of The Gaudy. We had to pick our way through old bits of scenery and a toot yard of props before we came to the door to the workshop out back. Snow was ankle-deep on the cobbles of the yard. Fitzy stepped out, still gripping my wrist, but I held back.
‘I can’t walk on that – look at my feet. They’ll be ruined. And it’s bleedin’ cold too. Madame Celeste says I have to be kept warm, remember?’
Fitzy turned back and for a moment I thought he might do me one. Instead he looked down at the silver slippers and the ribbons that criss-crossed my legs up to the knee. Highly indecent it was. If my poor old Nan – God rest her soul – could’ve seen me she would have had something to say about it.
He swore under his breath and took off his jacket. ‘Put this on then.’
The jacket smelt of cigar smoke, gin and dirty old man, but at least it was warm.
‘Better, are we? Come on now, girl.’ He set out across the yard, but I still didn’t follow.
‘Like I said, I can’t go out there with these on my feet. And, anyway, that’s not the way to the stage, is it?’
Fitzy swore again, more audible this time, and crunched back. He gathered me roughly up in his arms and started back across the yard with my feet dangling over the crook of his elbow. I could feel Lucca’s lovely little wings crush and mangle up under the jacket. I wriggled and started to squawk.
Now, I wasn’t a heavy packet by any means, but the cold and the effort of carrying me took old Fitzy’s breath away. It was a couple of seconds before he was able to puff out, ‘Just shut your trap, Kitty. Someone wants to have a word with you, so do as you’re told.’
We went up by the side of the outbuildings where Lucca and the hands worked, and Fitzy turned into a narrow brick alleyway I’d never noticed before. It ran between the back wall of the workshop and the wall that divided The Gaudy’s yard from the streets beyond. At the end of the alley a wooden gate stood open and through it I saw a neat black carriage pulled up on the street. Fitzy shouted something and the carriage jerked. Little steps clattered down into the snow.
A moment later and we were standing in front of the open door. The half-shuttered windows of the carriage were misted over, but I could see the pale glow of lamplight inside.
‘Come in, Kitty Peck. We need to have a talk before your performance this evening.’
The peculiar, fluttering voice of Lady Ginger was unmistakable. I kicked and twisted about, but Fitzy gripped tighter and more or less posted me through the small door and into the carriage, which rocked about a bit as I landed ungainly on the seat opposite the old witch. The door slammed and one of the horses gave a low whinny.
Lady Ginger stared at me, her eyes glinting in the yellow light. The carriage smelt of leather and opium, but beneath that there was something else too – something sweet and sour, something like milk on the turn, I thought.
After a moment she spoke. ‘I assume that is not your costume, Miss Peck? Take it off. I want to see what I have bought.’
I bit my lip, shrugged away Fitzy’s jacket and sat there with my shoulders hunched up and my hands clasped tight in my lap. The lamplight caught on the sequins and crystals sewn into the net of the bodice and my scrap of a skirt. The scandalised voice of old Nanny Peck piped up in my head – ‘As naked as a pig in shit, but not as warm!’
Nanny Peck had come over from Ireland in the Thirties, bringing my mother with her. She had a rich turn of phrase – which, in time, had been elegantly supplemented by the language of Limehouse – and a country girl’s natural suspicion of anything that smacked of loose morals. Indecent clothing had always been a subject of particular interest to Nanny Peck, but it was odd that I thought of her again now.
Lady Ginger narrowed her eyes and leaned back. She assessed me in a calculating, professional way, moving from my feet to my knees to my waist (I had my hands held tight just over the blood stain) and up to the top of the bodice where Peggy’s ministrations with the ribbons had produced two white mounds that looked likely to escape at any moment. Tell truth, I didn’t much like to catch sight of them when I looked down – they got in the way of the floor.
‘Very nice. Very nice indeed.’
She nodded and leaned forward to adjust the thin gauze stuff on my shoulders, pulling it down so that even more of me showed. The indignant voice of Nanny Peck went off again.
Lady Ginger was wearing watered black satin crusted with jet beads. Her silver plait was wound up on the top of her head and rubies as big as marbles hung from her ear lobes. Her knees were covered in a thick fur rug, not that she needed it. The carriage was as warm and stifling as her room at The Palace.
‘Fitzpatrick tells me you are a natural. He tells me that your performance tonight will be a sensation.’
I picked at a nail and nodded. ‘I . . . I’ve worked hard at it, Lady. The moves came easy and I’m not frightened of the heights.’
‘So I understand.’ She paused for a moment and when she spoke again her voice was crisp as old leaves. ‘I trust you have not forgotten why you are doing this?’
I looked up and stared direct into her face. She had a lot of rouge on her cheeks and today her black lips were painted red like the rubies.
‘No, I couldn’t do that. Lady Ginger, please, my brother . . . I have to know. Is he . . . that it to say, where is . . .’
‘Silence!’ She raised a hand and the bangles on her arms clattered down into the lace at her elbow. ‘That is precisely why I have come to see you – to remind you.’
Despite the cold, I could feel my naked back prickle with moisture against the leather of the seat as she continued. ‘I do not want you to fly away with the idea that you are anything more than my employee. Even if your performance this evening makes you the talk of London, that is nothing to you, or to me. Do you understand?’
I was silent as she went on. ‘Martha Lidgate is missing from The Comet. She hasn’t been seen for nine days now. At this rate every girl I run in Paradise will be a memory within a year. So, do you see, Miss Peck, I don’t want your head turned tonight. I want you to sing a pretty song, show that pretty body and titillate the punters with the possibility of your pretty death – but, most of all I want you to keep your wits about you, watch the theatre and tell Fitzpatrick what you see. You will have an unparalleled view of every corner of the hall.’
She broke off to cough, dabbing her mouth with a coloured silk square. She settled back, drew up the fur and licked her lips. Now that the red had rubbed off I could see they were stained black.
‘If you survive the week without a safety net we will move you and your cage to The Carnival and then to The Comet.’
‘But what about Joey?’ I blurted. ‘You promised. How do I know you aren’t lying to me? If he’s really alive, like you say, why can’t I see him? At least give me something to show he’s alive – a letter, he writes a lovely hand, I’d know that anywhere.’
Lady Ginger laughed and coughed again.
‘How touching. When you have completed your service, we will consider his . . . situation. But be assured, Miss Peck, that unless you satisfy me, you will never see him again. Now go. Fitzpatrick tells me that the doors will only be opened tonight once you are in position. Apparently there’s quite a crowd gathered in the street already. Fitzpatrick!’
She rapped on the side of the carriage. The door opened to reveal Fitzy shivering in the snow.
‘About time, so it is. My trinkets are like ball bearings. Come on then, Kitty, there’s a cage waiting for you.’
I made to pull the stinking coat back over my shoulders, but just as I turned to wrap it round me Lady Ginger leaned forward, swift as a greased adder, and plucked Lucca’s little broken wings from the bodice.
‘Shabby and pointless,’ she smiled, crushing up the feathers and plaster in her heavily ringed hands. ‘Take her.’
Fitzy bent forward and scooped me off the seat. The carriage rocked again and the horses spooked about, eager to be on the move. As he lifted me out I looked down at the feathers scattered around the bottom of Lady Ginger’s fur. It looked like a cat had been there with a pigeon. The angel wings Lucca had made for me and for Joey were damaged beyond repair.
The door slammed like a trap and the lascar on the box above us cracked a whip over the heads of the horses. Lady Ginger’s carriage rolled off into the snow and Fitzy swore and grumbled as he trudged back into the alleyway to deliver me to my cage.