Chapter Twenty-Four

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Daft, Billy thought. The lad’s daft. “Whyever don’t you just take ’em?” she whispered.

Daniel gave her a sharp look. He paid the vendor, cradled the six apples inside his cap, and tucked the lot under his arm. As they turned away from the stall, he stumbled against Billy. When he recovered himself, he somehow had another apple in his hand.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said to the vendor in the flat broad Yankee tones he’d learned from Mr. S. “I miscounted. That’s seven all together.” He paid for the last apple and walked away, whistling between his teeth and tossing the seventh apple in his hand as he went.

Billy followed, wondering what sort of game he was up to. She thrust her hands into her pockets as she walked, then stopped short.

“Hey!” she said, then “Hey!” again, louder, when Daniel didn’t stop.

He faced her, walking backward, still tossing the apple. “Missin’ something?” he asked.

“That’s mine!” she said. Part of her wanted to give him a kick in the shins, but part of her admired the way he’d captured her money along with the apple, all without her ever feeling his hand in her pocket.

“Oh, aye? Seems to me I’m the one as did the paying for it, eh?”

“You got me money, too, you bastard! Give it back! I’ll call you out for a thief, I will!”

“Go right ahead, you wee ee-jit. Mr. Stocking’ll know who to believe, won’t he now?”

Her face grew hot, not with anger, but with the truth of it.

Daniel stooped to face her nose to nose. “What’s the matter with you? Mr. Stocking takes us to a grand show, his friend gives you money, and the first thing you think to do is shame ’em both, and me, too, by stealing.”

“I—I—I didn’t think,” she said, heat washing all the way to her belly now.

Daniel knocked her hat askew. “That’s your trouble. You don’t never think, do you?”

“I do too. I think about Phizzy,” she said. “And Mr. S.”

Daniel straightened her cap, then yanked the visor down over her eyes. “Well, then, maybe you’re not entirely hopeless.”

Fumbling with her hat, she stepped forward blindly and walked into an enormous purple cushion. “Zut, alors! Qu’est-ce que c’est?” The cushion seized her by the shoulders and shook her. “Petit cochon!” the cushion exclaimed, then continued with a string of words so fast and strange that they seemed all one great, long word.

She looked up in horror and awe to see that the cushion wore the face of “M-M-M-adame St-St-St—” Billy couldn’t get her mortified tongue past the St—.

“Madame Staccato.” Daniel grabbed Billy away from the mountainous singer. He made his best bow, his face blushing nearly as red as his hair. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.” He snatched off Billy’s hat and poked her to make her bow, too. “So sorry, ma’am. My friend doesn’t always look where he’s going. I hope he hasn’t mussed your gown.”

Billy wasn’t sure whether she’d rather throw herself at the singer’s feet and beg forgiveness or simply fall down and die of shame. “I’m sorry, really I am, ma’am.”

“And so should you be, you nasty leetle boy,” Madame Staccato huffed.

Billy’s cheeks grew so hot she felt she might melt into a steaming puddle. Daniel was right; she didn’t think, and now her thoughtlessness had ruined everything.

“And who has permit these wicked boys to come, heh?” Madame said. “I shall call someone to throw you away, non?” She rapped Billy smartly under the chin with her fan. “Regarde-moi, petit vaurien! Regarde-moi quand je te parle!” Her voice wasn’t light and sweet, as Billy had expected, but thick and raspy. “Mon Dieu!” Madame clutched Billy’s chin hard.

Billy braced herself for the slap that was sure to come.

Instead, the singer patted Billy’s cheek and began to laugh. “C’est le petit oiseau, n’est-ce pas?” she said. “The little boy with the voice”—she gathered her fingertips, put them to her lips and made a loud kissing noise—“magnifique!” She gave Billy a little curtsy.

Billy’s jaw dropped. She looked to Daniel for help. “I fancy that means you’re forgiven, lad,” he said, putting a mocking emphasis on the lad.

“You have the gift,” the singer said. “There is not so many comme ça. Like us, ben?”

“M-Me?” Billy’s voice squeaked.

“Oui, mon petit. The most of them who sing—feh—” She dismissed them with a flick of her fan. “They sing here.” Her fan tapped Billy’s lips. “Or here.” Madame’s plump fingers touched Billy’s throat. “But we—you and Madame—we sing here.” She put one hand on Billy’s chest and another on her own ample bosom. “C’est vrai, non?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Billy said, though she had no idea what sayvray meant. “But your singing, ma’am,” she said. “It was like—like magic. I could never sing like that.”

Daniel’s fingers dug hard into Billy’s shoulder, and he made a cautionary hissing noise through his teeth. Billy realized that there could be drawbacks to playing a lad’s part. As a boy, how could she ask Madame Staccato to teach her to sing?

The singer laughed again, giving Billy and Daniel an appraising glance. “Ah, mon petit, you should hope not, heh, Monsieur—Monsieur—You have a name, but I forget it.”

“Billy. William,” she said. “And—and Daniel,” she added, pointing to her companion.

Monsieur Guillaume, there are in some places the men who sing like Madame, but you would not like what they do to make you so.” She cast an enigmatic look at Billy’s trousers, then a longer one at Daniel’s. Billy didn’t understand, but from the way the singer’s eyes traveled up to Daniel’s face, and the way he reddened at her wink, she guessed that Daniel knew.

“N’est-ce pas, Monsieur Daniel?” Madame Staccato added before bursting into laughter.

“But could you teach a lad like me to sing . . . better?”

“Aye,” Daniel said. “Mr. Stocking says Billy might make a fair tenor someday.”

“Tenor, bass, baritone, you will not know until you are grown.” Madame Staccato sighed. “But this—” Her fingers on Billy’s cheek were soft as butterfly wings. “It will be lost. Perdu. Quel dommage! Chante doucement while you can, mon petit oiseau. You perhaps become grenouille—frog—when you grow, like this one, ben?” She jutted her chin in Daniel’s direction. “And now, mes amis, it is time for Madame to take her rest.” The singer grasped Daniel by the shoulders, squishing Billy between them, so that her face was pressed into Madame’s bosom. “Au revoir, Monsieur le Grenouille.” Billy heard the distinct smacking noise of two kisses being planted on Daniel’s face. Then Madame’s face was suddenly inches away from her own, and the singer’s plump fingers squeezed Billy’s shoulders. “Au revoir, mon petit oiseau,” she said, kissing Billy first on one cheek, then on the other. “Perhaps I see you again soon, heh?”

Billy stared after Madame’s round purple shape as she bustled away.

Daniel’s fingertips nudged Billy’s jaw closed. “You’ll be catching flies if you stand about like that, lad,” he said with a smirk. He took one of the seven apples from his cap and bit it, crunching loudly as he walked away. “C’mon, we still ain’t seen them ponies yet.”

Billy raced to catch him up. “She was grand, wasn’t she?”

“Aye. First person I seen who you hadn’t none of your smart answers for. I’d take me hat off to her, if I was wearing it.”

“That name she kept calling me—puh-tee wah-zoh—what d’you s’pose it means?”

Daniel took another bite of his apple and chewed it slowly, savoring it with little mmmm noises so Billy’s mouth watered, imagining how crisp and juicy and sweet it was. With a grin, he threw the apple to her so quickly that she almost missed it. “It means ‘you wee ee-jit,’ of course.”

The lass had a gift, Daniel thought. So Madame Staccato had said of Billy. Everyone else seemed to agree. It was beneath him to envy a child, and a lass at that, but he couldn’t help wishing that he had some sort of gift, too. The jugglers, the acrobats, the rope dancer all had their own particular gifts—gifts that he’d never imagined a week ago. Then there was Mr. Chamberlain, whose gift was to play a part so well that even when you knew it was trickery, you couldn’t help being pulled into it. And Mr. Stocking, with his music and his horsemanship and his storytelling and banter, there was a fellow with enough gifts for half a dozen men.

Why did some folk have such gifts and others not? Not that he was ungrateful, he thought, for fear of cursing what he did have, which was more than he’d ever expected. Friends, for one. He’d found and left one friend behind in young Ethan and had discovered another in Mr. Stocking. He glanced sidelong at Billy, contentedly nibbling her apple down to the core. And maybe half a friend when the wee demon was in a fair mood. He had his freedom, and most important of all, he had Ivy. That was more than any man had a right to ask, wasn’t it?

The trouble was, his gifts had come from outside himself and could be lost any time. He traced a cross over his heart. God forbid the day Ivy would be gone. What would he have when it was just himself left, but a strong back and strong hands, like any other man? Was it selfish to want a wee bit of that spark that gave Billy her voice or Mr. Stocking his stories?

A nudge at his elbow broke into his musing.

“Get out of that!” He slapped Billy’s hand away from the cap full of apples he held in the crook of his arm. “You’ve had yours.”

“Couldn’t I be carrying some of ’em? Only three, that’s all. I want to see can I juggle ’em like them fellas in the show.” Billy tossed her apple core from hand to hand to demonstrate.

“Oh, aye, and they’d all be ending up in the dust bruised and battered.”

“Please? Just to try. You’re not going to be eating all of ’em, are you?”

“They’re not for me.”

“You’ll make Ivy sick with all them apples. Give me three for Phizzy.”

“They’re not for Ivy. Not this time.”

Billy’s eyes widened. “It’s them six ponies, isn’t it? Whatever are you going to be doing?”

“I’m not exactly certain just yet. But I aim to have a good look at them somehow.”

“Why?”

“There’s something queer about ’em.”

The dancing ponies didn’t look like much without their trappings. The golden blankets had hidden bony ribs and patchy coats. Where the shiny black polish had flaked off, their hooves were cracked and brittle. Still, they picked up their feet with sprightly delicate motions as they milled around the pen.

Daniel took one of the apples from his cap and handed the rest to Billy. “You wait here,” he told her before he scrambled over the fence. The ponies scattered, then regrouped in a corner, huddled like sheep waiting to be shorn. He slipped out his knife and cut one of his apples in half, muttering softly about how crisp and juicy it was, just the thing for a good little pony. “Wouldn’t it be a shame if I had to be eating it all meself, eh, lads?”

The first pony to come forward was a black-and-white piebald gelding whose shaggy forelock drooped into his eyes. He snorted and shook his head so that the hair swished out of his eyes, then fell back again like a curtain.

“Ain’t you the brave lad, eh?” Daniel took a step forward, offering the apple to the little piebald. “Sure and wouldn’t you be liking a treat ’long about now?”

The pony stretched his neck out as far as he could, trying to reach the apple without separating from his fellows. Daniel held the apple close enough to tempt him, but far enough away that the pony couldn’t get it without taking a step.

The pony came forward.

Daniel stepped back, closed his fist over the apple and brought his hand in toward his chest. The pony followed. It wasn’t until the gelding’s head was nearly touching Daniel that he yielded the prize. The pony’s lips quivered over his palm and made the apple disappear. Daniel stuck the rest of the apple into his pocket as the pony butted him for more. “Oh, no. That’s for later. You stand still a bit first, eh?”

Billy started to climb the fence. “Wait,” he said, without turning to face her. “I don’t think he’s ready for two of us yet.” Billy sat on the top rail and watched while Daniel ran a hand lightly over the pony, working his way from nose to rump, noting what touch made the beast’s skin quiver and what sent the quiver away, what made him cock his leg for a kick and how much to back off before the pony put the foot back down. He circled the pony several times that way, until the animal’s wariness faded into resignation, then tolerance, then boredom.

“Let’s have a look at them feet, now, eh, lad?” He slid his hand down the pony’s front leg. The piebald trembled but didn’t bolt. The muscles tensed as Daniel’s fingers neared the fetlock covered with matted hair. He leaned against the pony’s shoulder so it had no choice but to raise its hoof, let him cup its shaggy foot in his hand.

“Daniel!” Billy said in a loud whisper.

“A minute,” he replied, not looking up.

“Daniel!” Billy repeated.

“Hey, you there! What’re you doing, fooling around with my horses?”

Daniel’s skin quivered the way the pony’s had at his first touch. Would every sharp voice set him twitching as if someone had set a constable on him? He focused on the warm slope of the pony’s shoulder against his, the coarse dusty hair and bony ankle in his palm, the rough edge of chipped polish under his thumb. He settled his features before looking up. “He seemed lame. I was only wanting to see had he picked up a stone.” He kept the hoof in his hand, probing gently along the pastern. The twitchy feeling inside him came back, but for a different reason.

The barrel-chested, dark-eyed man glowering over the fence might have been Professor Romanov’s twin, except without the mustache and beard. “And you, are you with him, boy?” he said to Billy, giving her the same wary look he gave Daniel.

“Yessir. We only wanted to help your pony because we didn’t see anyone else about.” She spoke with the flat Yankee tones Mr. Stocking had been teaching them.

The man’s angular jaw glowed pink. “And what did you find?”

Daniel let the pony’s foot drop. “Just a bit of a stone caught in his frog. I’ve prized it out.” Following Billy’s cue, he drained as much Irish from his voice as he could.

The man cocked his head with a sideways look in his eye, as if he were trying to catch Daniel out in a lie. “Did you find anything else?”

“No, sir, just a stone.” Daniel rubbed his palm hard against his thigh, but couldn’t erase the feel of what he had found: a rough circle of scarred skin broken and healed and broken again under the shaggy mat of hair around the pony’s ankle.

“You think you know something about horses, do you, boy?” As the man came closer, his coat opened a bit. What looked like a small furry animal peeked out of a vest pocket. Daniel realized that the animal was, in fact, Professor Romanov’s beard.

“You’re the Perfesser,” Billy said, her voice treacly with feigned awe. “We seen your show. It’s a marvel what you can get them ponies to do.”

Professor Romanov puffed out his chest and grasped his lapels. “Ah, well, you have to have the knack for it, boy. Ain’t too many that does.”

“Our master says ponies are the devil to work with,” Billy continued brightly. “You must have—what, three or four lads helping you with ’em?”

“No, my boy, they are all trained by my hand and mine alone.”

“You never! They’re lovely, they are, every last one. What are their names?”

“Red, Gray, Black, Brown, Socks, and . . .” The Professor pointed out each pony, whose color matched its name. “Oh, and Teeth.” The last was the spotted pony who’d taken Daniel’s apple.

Billy pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Begging your pardon, sir, but those don’t sound quite proper names for horses. I mean, it’s just their colors.”

“Hmph. What’s your name, boy?”

“Billy.”

“And what’s there about you that looks like a Billy?” Professor Romanov stared down his nose at the lass. “Can’t answer that one, can you? What good’s a name that don’t mean anything, huh? Can’t answer that one, neither. I say Red or Socks, you know just which pony I want. Got no time to be messing with a lot of fool names like Billy or Harry or Daisy.”

“Oh . . .” Billy gnawed her lower lip for a bit. “But, sir, ‘Teeth’?”

“You stay around that pony long enough, you’ll see why.”

“D’you think you’d be minding if we gave your ponies some apples? Seeing as they were so grand and all, we thought they might’ve earned a treat.”

“Hmmph,” the Professor said. “Seems to me it’s the one who’s trained ’em that deserves the treat.” He took a flask from his pocket and pulled the cork with his teeth.

“Can’t you have any sort of treat any time you like?” Billy asked, wide-eyed as if she didn’t know what was in the Professor’s flask. “It’s your show, isn’t it? You got the best act in it.”

Laying it on a bit thick, she is, Daniel thought. He rubbed his hand across his face and pretended to cough to hide his chuckle.

The Professor’s suspicious expression melted. “If only the world worked that way, boy,” he said, shaking his head. He tossed back a swallow of whatever was in the flask. “All right. You can give them damned ponies as many apples as you please.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes against the haze of segar and pipe smoke that fogged the inn’s taproom. Billy tugged his sleeve and pointed out the familiar round shape and faded spencer of the peddler sitting in a corner with a pipe in his hand and a mug and a bowl before him. “Hope we’re not too late for supper,” she said as they wove their way between the tables.

Mr. Stocking slid down the bench to make room for them. “Where you fellas been?” He waved to the tavern-keeper, held up two fingers, and pointed first to the empty bowl in front of him, and then to his companions. Their host filled two bowls with some sort of stew and set them in front of Daniel and Billy, along with two lumps of grayish brown bread and two mugs of ale.

“Thought I’d have a closer look at them ponies,” Daniel said, sniffing at his dish. It had been stewing so long that the vegetables had dissolved into mush, and the meat had shredded into stringy bits. Still, it smelled good, the savory herbs promising to ease some of the bitter taste of his encounter with Professor Romanov. Billy tucked into her meal as if she’d not eaten for weeks, alternately slurping down her stew and gnawing ferociously at her bread.

“They step about pretty sharp, don’t they?” the peddler said, though there was no admiration in his voice.

Daniel rubbed his hand on his trousers, as if that could erase the feel of the pony’s scarred fetlock. “I’d prance pretty sharp, too, if me feet hurt.”

Mr. Stocking nodded. “I thought as much. That gait doesn’t come natural to many horses, and it can be a devil of a time teaching it. That Perfesser didn’t look like he had much patience for teaching.”

“What d’you mean?” Billy asked, a dribble of brown gravy slopping down her chin. Mr. Stocking winced as she wiped it with her shirt cuff.

Daniel set his fist knuckles-down on the table, pretending it was the pony’s hoof. “Old scars right along here.” He ran a finger along his wrist. “I wager I’d’a found other marks on him, had I time to look for ’em. What d’you fancy done it?” He tore a bit from the center of his bread and worked it into a doughy lump between his fingers.

“Lots’a tricks I’ve seen fellas use,” Mr. Stocking said. “Mustard plasters so they pick up their feet to get away from the sting of it. Chains so the rattling gives ’em a start. It doesn’t mean that the Perfesser done it. Could be the fella who owned ’em before he did.”

“They didn’t look over fond of him when he come over to run us off.” Daniel shook his head. “None so pretty now, eh?” he said, with a pointed look at Billy.

She pushed her bowl away with a grimace. “You’ll have to tell Mr. Chamberlain before they leave tomorrow,” she told Mr. Stocking. “He’ll have to stop it.”

“And then what?” Daniel pressed. “What’s to keep the Perfesser from leaving, ponies and all?”

Mr. Stocking’s face brightened a little. “As a matter of fact, those ponies don’t belong to Neezer.”

“Neezer?” Daniel and Billy repeated simultaneously.

“Perfesser Romanov. Those ponies are rightly Fred’s.”

“That’s settled, then, isn’t it?” Billy said. “He’ll dismiss that nasty old Perfesser, and then—”

Mr. Stocking took a long swallow of ale. “Yes, it’s the and then that’s the sticking point, isn’t it, fellas? Who’s to say the next perfesser won’t be just as bad as this one? Most men aren’t as soft about horses as the three of us.”

“Including your Mr. Chamberlain?” Daniel asked.

The peddler hesitated. “That I couldn’t say. I never seen him misuse an animal, but I never seen him stop it being done, neither.”

“He’ll do something if you tell him to,” Billy said. “You being such great friends and all.”

Mr. Stocking rasped a calloused finger across the stubble on his jaw. “Yes, well, there’s friends and there’s friends.” The peddler stirred uneasily on the bench, then took a decisive breath and continued. “See, it’s like this. Fred, he’s not the type of fella to let friendship stand in the way of profit.”