Wednesday, November 21, 1888
Yes, I believe this will do quite nicely.
I stood in the center of the stage at the Princess Royal Theatre, basking in the glow of the newly installed electric lights flooding the boards beneath me.
“How does it look from over there?” Minerva smiled at me from the shadows of stage left.
“Wonderful,” I said. “I will never be able to go back to a normal life after this day.”
She joined me on stage. “Mrs. Jones needs you backstage to do a final fitting of the new costume.” She looked out into the empty audience, a subtle smile appearing on her painted lips.
“Have you ever performed on this stage, Miss Baudelaire?”
“No, I haven’t,” she said quietly, her eyes still fixed on the hundreds of seats. “My act is far too salacious for this audience.” She looked back to me, the dreamy look disappearing from her gaze. “Keep that in mind tonight. This is a different audience than you are used to. Now, go.”
She gestured to stage right and I nodded obediently, practically floating back to the dressing room area. None of this felt real.
Mrs. Jones helped me change into my elaborate costume, a glittering creation she had been working on for two weeks straight. My skin looked like milk against the sheen of the red silk. Hundreds of tiny sequins sparkled like magical fairy dust whenever the fabric swayed. The snug bodice pushed my full breasts up higher on my chest than I ever thought possible. Delicate black lace gloves reached my elbows while my upper arms were left bare. With the exception of a few tendrils that hung down by my neck, my curls were piled high atop my head and decorated with gold chains, small faux gems, and an enormous white ostrich feather. I am sure that if Mrs. Jones could have made it happen, she would have somehow embedded a wooden ship among my locks to make them appear even more like Marie Antoinette’s.
I gave a little half twirl in front of the mirror to check my angles. Just as I predicted, my waist had never looked so small and my hips so round.
“It is perfect, Mrs. Jones,” I said. “Your skill with a sewing needle is incomparable.”
“I know,” she said, sounding rather bored. “He seems to fink so as well.”
My stomach fluttered as Everett stepped into the reflection of the mirror.
Everett Rigby had looked at me adoringly many times before. However, those gazes were wide-eyed combinations of love and attraction. This expression was different. His mouth was a perfectly straight line. His eyes were wide as he took in every detail of my appearance, but his brow was slightly pinched in the middle. His usual looks of longing ended when he realized I had seen him staring, but not this time. Instead, he studied my face, hair, and costume for a long time. Even when our eyes met in the mirror, he continued to hold my gaze.
Mrs. Jones saw this exchange, cleared her throat, and made up some excuse to leave the room. When the door closed behind her, Everett took a few steps closer to me before placing his hands into his pockets.
“So?” I said with a wicked grin, desperate to lighten the atmosphere between us. “Do I look presentable?”
“You are a work of art, Cora Pringle,” he said.
My smile softened as my cheeks warmed. I rarely took compliments on my appearance so much to heart but the sincerity in his voice and eyes told me I should.
“Then why do you look so serious?”
His gaze hit the floor like a stone. He closed his eyes and released a sigh through his nose before pulling a document from the inside of his coat. It was a folded-up page of a newspaper.
“Oh, is that one of my interviews?” I clapped my hands together. “How delightful. Thank you for saving it for me.”
I had done a few interviews over the previous days to promote the event. Not that we needed to, what with all the seats already sold out. Every newspaper reporter I had spoken to about my upcoming performance had hung on every word, laughed at my quips, and had gushed about my beauty and charm.
“No, Cora, it’s not your interview.”
I raised an eyebrow at him just before Minerva burst into the room.
“That bloody ingrate,” she raged, her voice deep and furious, a rolled newspaper in hand. “I will destroy the bastard, I swear it.”
“What has happened—”
Before I could even finish the question, Everett handed me the newspaper article and I frantically unfolded it. My eyes ran over the length of it, the pace of my heart becoming more frantic, the sound of my blood boiling pulsing in my ears. I curled my fingers into a ball around the article, the satisfying crunch of the paper within my palm. It fell from my quivering fingers.
A lump formed in my throat. “Why would Magni do this?” The words came out in a thin whisper, my throat closing in around them.
“Jealousy,” Everett said simply.
“He gave away many of his own tricks, not just mine. Has he gone mad?” I looked at Minerva. “What would make Magni do such a foolish thing?”
Miss Baudelaire clenched her jaw. “Many of your early stage dates were originally his. He felt you were stealing his act, stealing his fame.”
Upon hearing Minerva’s shouts, Bella—my opening act—joined us in the dressing room. Her makeup was about half done and a few strings from her costume had yet to be tied.
“What’s happened?”
Everett gave her a quick explanation of the crisis.
Bella’s face fell and she paused, thinking. “Do you think the newspaper would have paid for something like that?”
“Why do you ask?” Minerva looked up at her.
“Three days ago I caught him leaving The Hemlock with a suitcase. He told me not to say anything.” She winced. “He said he had a ticket for a ship to America for that afternoon.”
We stood in silence, trying to process everything.
Bella added quietly, “Perhaps no one has read it.”
Even with Bella there to warm up the crowd before my performance, stepping out onto that stage felt like dropping down into my own empty casket, laid open in my damp grave.
My entrance music began. The plucking of those divine sitar strings had never sounded so miserable with only a few people clapping. Bella announced my entrance in a voice loud enough to reach the back of the theater, even though such effort was not worth the trouble. The night was already lost to us.
Taking a deep breath, I strode onto the stage, summoning every speck of confidence in my being. The theater lights blinded me for a moment, and I thought perhaps that the seats were filled.
But no. Once my eyes adjusted, I could clearly see that the fifty or so people that had bothered to come had all been moved closer to the stage, leaving most of the theater seats empty. My gaze danced between the empty rows in the stalls and then up into the balcony.
I cleared my throat and struggled to gain control of my quivering legs.
“Good evening everyone!” I cried out. “I am Lady Selene, the Mystic of the Taj Mahal.”
One single pair of hands clapped for me.
“Do you feel the chill in the theater tonight? I certainly do. That means the spirits are among us tonight!”
No response. The silence walloped me, smacking me hard in the stomach.
“I trust you feel that too. Let’s start this evening’s journey, shall we?” I strode the length of the stage. “Will someone join me on stage so that we may contact the spirit realm together? I do not have the strength to reach the other side alone.”
“You’re a bloody fraud!” someone yelled.
My teeth chattered, every click and crack deafening inside my head.
“I do not know what you have been told,” I said aloud, the wavering in my voice clear for all to hear—all who even bothered to show up anyway, “but the spirits are disappointed that you have turned your backs on them.”
“Trickery!” someone responded from one of the seats close to the front right of the stage.
“We want our money back!” someone else yelled, their words thrown at me from the left.
“That article is full of terrible lies, written out of hatred and jealousy for my gifts!” I screamed, watching as two audience member silhouettes made their way down the aisle to the lobby. “Please, do not leave. Come up on stage and we will summon the spirits together!”
A few more onlookers left their seats. As they scoffed among themselves, I felt a hot tear escape down my cheek and slide down my neck.
One of those spectators came back, a dark figure among the sparse little audience, and approached the stage. I did not recognize her, even as she glared up at me from right in front of the stage, but it soon became evident we had met before. She was perhaps in her fifties, shocks of gray woven through her tight bun, and her dress was plain but clean and well-kept.
“You told me, right to my face, that my three children had reached out to you, to speak through you in order to communicate with me.” She shook her head at me. “I am ashamed for taking your lies as you took my money. I am ashamed, but you should be more ashamed.”
My dry throat ached as I recalled the séance performed in Everett’s old flat. She had told me of having three babies in quick succession and then losing them all at once to smallpox. I remembered the strain on her face and pain in her eyes as she described the ache she had lived with since then.
“You lied to me,” she said. “You lied to all of us.”
The words were like a fearsome vice, clamping down on my heart with reckless abandon. I did not even try to stop her as she turned and left, following some others down the aisle and out of the theater. All I could was watch them go.
“Cora.”
I slowly turned my head to the left. Everett stood just beyond where the stream of the theater lights illuminated the stage.
My chest heaved as I looked into his pitying face. I loathed being pitied. I would rather have been hated than pitied. Another tear rolled down my face and I swiped at it, leaving a smudge of makeup on my middle and ring finger.
I took one last look into the empty void of the audience before fleeing backstage. From that point on, everything was a blur.
I am Cora Pringle, damn it. I am better than them. I am better than every single one of them out there.
I went straight for the dressing room, locking the door behind me. I leaned my head against it and felt Everett’s palms slapping it.
“Cora!” His fraught whacks turned to pounding fists. “Cora, let me in!”
Sitting on the nearby dressing table, likely left by some other entertainer or maybe even Bella, was an abandoned bottle of gin.
Beneath the sound of Everett’s pleading words, I could hear Miss Baudelaire and a theater manager of some kind arguing about money.
“Can I please come in? It’ll be alright, just let me come in.”
They despise me. My fingers curled around the smooth glass neck. They all hate me so, so much.
Something heavy hit the door, and it bulged slightly from the impact. The manager yelled about property damage. Something hit the door again, and this time the door made a cracking sound in response.
The rim of the bottle found my thirsty lips and I gulped greedily.
I do not deserve to be hated.
I beckoned the abyss with every drop on my tongue and embraced oblivion.