O
nly later, when she was locked away at Nightfall Gardens, would Lily realize that the moment she saw the man with the wolf’s-head cloak was the beginning of the end of her old life.

Tonight, though, her biggest concern was finishing the rest of the performance.

“Line!” Celeus Talbot demanded. The old actor swayed drunkenly onto the stage of the Golden Bough Theater. In his time, Talbot had been the greatest actor of his generation, playing Dr. Faustus and Hamlet before kings and queens. A love of the bottle ruined him and now he spent his days deep in rotgut whiskey and his nights calling out for lines he no longer bothered memorizing.

“It’ll bring great prestige to have him on the bill,” her father, Thomas, told the family when he introduced the besotted actor to them. Lily looked at her mother, Moira, and brother, Silas, who raised one eyebrow skeptically. “This will put us on the map at last.”

That was her father, always the optimist. They could play the dingiest gin halls or grimiest vaudeville stages and he believed that they were one step from “making it.” The Amazing Blackwood Family tops the bill at long last.

“Are thee prepardest to spend life under the sea?” Moira pitched the line from offstage. Lily saw her mother out of the corner of her eye holding the script her father had written.

Celeus Talbot staggered toward the young girl, who was tied to a wooden beam with a papier-mâché chain. For a second, he nearly stumbled into the hole in the center of the stage.

“Isn’t she grand,” her father exclaimed when the family first saw the dilapidated theater with its creaking stage, worn velvet seats and oil-encrusted walls where the lamp racks left stains on the wallpaper. The worst part was the hole in the stage floor. “Just make sure and step around it,” he warned. “Think of it as a test of your acting ability.” The Golden Bough might have been “grand” 100 years ago, but now it was just another bottom-of-the-barrel fire hazard for third-rate acting troupes.

“Are thee preparedest to eat my fleas,” Celeus slurred.

Someone in the audience guffawed. A tomato flew out of the darkness and splattered against the backdrop.

“Line!” Celeus barked. He was close enough that Lily smelled his rancid breath. The old actor’s eyes were cracked hard-boiled eggs behind the gray makeup supposed to make him look like a sea monster, but which made him look like a dejected chimney sweep.

“Then down to the ocean we go,” Moira called behind the curtain.

“Down we must go!” Celeus thundered. He raised his index finger in sharp exclamation and immediately thrust it over his mouth to keep from vomiting.

“Hee hee, the salty dog’s had one too many,” a gruff voice heckled from the audience.

“Only way he can make it through this rubbish, innit?” someone called back.

Another tomato whizzed out of the dark. This one barely missed Celeus who was listing like a pummeled prizefighter about to go down for the count.

Lily looked into the audience and saw the usual bowler hats, winking cigars, and irate wives trying to stuff some culture down their husbands’ throats. Most of the seats were empty. A homeless man was asleep in the front row. He was spread out across several seats, slack-jawed, one sock on, one off. His suit jacket was balled under his head for a pillow. In the back of the theater, a card game was taking place.

The man in the second row stood ou
t over the others as though lit by his own incandescence. A mane of white hair fell to his shoulders. His face was gaunt. Ice blue eyes stared out of hollowed sockets. A puckered scar ran from the side of his mouth to his ear. Most amazing of all was the wolf’s-hide cloak he wore. The head, which doubled as a hood, was thrown casually over his shoulder. It must have been a magnificent beast when it was alive. Inch-long fangs stuck out of the gaping maw of its mouth. The man caught Lily staring and didn’t turn away.

His eyes made her uncomfortable. She glanced toward the curtain where her brother Silas was jotting down lines with a quill and foolscap paper.

‘Please, not this time,’
she thought
.
Her brother had been so consumed with his writing yesterday that he missed his cue. Lily stalled the restless crowd by dancing a jig while dodging tomatoes and flying ale steins.

Silas must have sensed how poorly the performance was going. He looked up at that moment, set his papers aside and strode on to the stage.

“Here comes Little Lord Fauntleroy,” one of the audience hooted. Laughter echoed off the cavernous walls of the Golden Bough.

Lily had to admit her little brother
did
look unusual. He was all skin and bones with a rat’s nest of black hair that no amount of tonic could tame. He towered inches above the other children his age. His eyes were his oddest characteristic. One was blue and one was brown. That never failed to draw comment from those meeting him for the first time. “
Well, I’ve never seen anything like that before
.” “
Are you sure he’s all right?
”

“Unhand her, beast of the deep! Beautiful Andromeda will go nowhere with you,” Silas commanded Celeus who was attempting to take the papier-mâché chains off of her. The white robes her brother wore were two sizes too large.

“How about going somewhere with me, love?” a player in the card game called to Lily. She hoped no one could see her blush in the darkened theater.

“Line!” Celeus thundered. He finally managed to work the fake chains free and grabbed Lily by the arm.

“Brave Perseus, prepare to meet thy doom,” Moira said from off-stage.

“What?” Celeus said. He cupped his ear so he could hear better.

“Brave Perseus, prepare to meet thy doom,” she repeated.

“Perseus, ready for doom,” he mumbled.

Fake swords were drawn. Silas and Celeus clashed and clanged the props together. At one point, the old actor took a wild swing at Silas. The young boy ducked, and Celeus stumbled behind the curtain long enough to down half a pint of whiskey before roaring back on the stage.

The alcohol reinvigorated the old actor and he began improvising lines.

“Let’s see you dodge this,” Celeus said. He lunged at the young boy, who stepped out of the way. The thespian was angry now. “I’ll spill your blood and steal your rotting sister,” he hissed.

The audience came alive for the first time. Blood fever overtook them. “Take his head off, you old git!” A man in a bowler stood and shouted. “Maim him, boy!” a woman in a black dress called. The people playing cards began to place bets on who would win the fight.

With a final bellow, Celeus charged Silas, who feinted and smacked the actor on the backside as he hurtled off the stage into the orchestra pit. Groans issued from the injured man.

The audience went wild, stamping their feet in approval until mortar shook from the walls of the Golden Bough. Silas and Lily exchanged a look. It wasn’t supposed to go like this, not at all. There was still another act to the play. Celeus’s groans grew louder from the pit.

“Somebody help me out of here,” the great thespian whimpered. “I think I broke my leg.”

“Now!” Moira said. Silas and Lily exchanged nervous glances, took each other’s hands and bowed to the audience. Laughter and thunderous applause continued as the moth-eaten curtain whisked across the stage.

Their mother was waiting for them as they exited into the wings. Behind the curtain, they heard the audience shuffling toward the doors.

“Always exit while you’re on top,” their mother said, giving them a gentle smile.

“I suppose I should make sure Mr. Talbot can climb out of the orchestra pit,” Silas groused.

His mother looked at him as if it wasn’t an option. “He’s an old man who has nothing left but his pride,” she said. “Help him out and tell him we’re adding 10 percent to his pay tonight.”

Silas opened his mouth as if to say something and then bit down on his lip. He slipped around the curtain, leaving the two of them alone.

“Let me help you with your makeup,” Moira said. The dressing room where the actors changed was packed with costumes from various performances from over the decades, a make-up counter and a bubbled mirror so old that it glowed.

“Horrible, absolutely awful,” Lily said. She dropped into a chair in front of the mirror and crossed her arms.

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” Moira said as she began removing Lily’s makeup.

“No, I suppose Mr. Talbot made it to the second act before he fell off the stage,” Lily fumed. “Father promised when we moved to New Amsterdam we wouldn’t have to play places like
this
.”

“Places like what?” Moira said. Color flushed her cheeks and Lily could tell her mother was angry.

“Honestly, mother,” Lily swept her hands around the room. “Places where mold doesn’t grow on the walls, where you might fall through a hole in the stage or be pelted by a tomato or play to an empty theater. He promised this town would be different.”

“
New Amsterdam is a large city. It takes a while to get established. Things will change, you’ll see.” Moira scrubbed roughly at the make up on her daughter’s face.

“You say that every time, and every time before we can make a name for ourselves we move to the next city. I don’t understand why we can’t settle down somewhere. Do you know how hard it is for Silas and me to make friends?”

Canaan, Harwich, Barrington, Freetown, Ipswich, Sudbury and Weymouth. The list of cities where they lived was long and the number of backwood provinces that they toured was longer. Every two years, for all of Lily’s 13 years, the Blackwood family had up rooted and moved on to the next town. They never stayed long enough to make friends or feel that any place was home.

Moira’s eyes softened and she stroked her daughter’s face. Lily was tall for her age, with white-blond hair that curled past her shoulders. Her skin was the color of cream, except for her red lips and pale blue eyes. Perfect seashell ears stuck out of the foam of her hair.

“I know how hard this must be for —” Moira started.

“You don’t know any such thing,” Lily shouted. “Otherwise you wouldn’t put us through it.” She pushed her mother’s hand away and furiously began brushing her own hair.

“If you had any idea what your father has sacrificed for your sake, you wouldn’t say such things,” her mother said.

“Him? He’s as much a foolish dreamer as my brother,” Lily said. “He can’t act, write or balance the books, yet we’re the Amazing Blackwoods.” She laughed at the irony of that.

“Don’t,” Moira said and the fire was back in her eyes. “Don’t say that about him.”

“Why? I’m not saying anything you don’t already know,” Lily said. She walked to the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” her mother demanded.

“
Some
of us have fans to greet,” Lily said stomping out of the room.

No matter how poorly the performance went, a trickle of fans would wait behind the back of the theater for the autograph of the beautiful girl with white hair. Tonight was no different. A smattering of people stood on the cobblestone street, huddled in hats and scarves and blowing on their hands to keep warm. A thin yellow moon floated large above the alley.

“Outstanding performance, miss. Outstanding!” a man so fat that his cravat couldn’t be tied said.

“Brilliant, you brought me to tears,” a woman with no chin in a cinched black coat said and then whispered. “I always fancied myself an actress.”

Lily signed autographs and told them to come back next week, when the Amazing Blackwoods would perform the works of Euripides. She waited until everyone left and was about to go back inside when a rough voice came from a darkened doorway across the street.

“One more autograph,” the man with the wolf cloak said, stepping into the threadbare light of the moon. The wolf’s head had been pulled over him like a hat and its eyes burned gold. Only the bottom half of his face and the scar near his mouth were visible. His lips turned up into a harsh smile.

“I — I have to go,” Lily said. She didn’t know why, but her heart was hammering in her chest and for some reason she felt very frightened. She grabbed the door to open it, but the man in the cloak slammed it shut. Lily shrank against the wall.

“Is that any way to treat someone who’s come such a long way to see you?” h
e asked.

“Who are you?” Lily replied
, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

He released the door and stepped away from her. He smiled again and his teeth curved into fangs in the moonlight.

“Who am I? Why, I’m your uncle. I’m your dear father’s brother, Jonquil.”

BOOK: Nightfall Gardens

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