Shadow Conspiracy (50 page)

I ducked behind the stage manager’s podium. The top was littered with a thick sheaf of papers denoting lighting and set instructions along with notes on his musical and dance cues.

Dancers poised in their starting positions. The conductor raised his baton.

All eyes turned toward him.

On the downbeat, the attentive musicians began the brief Overture of bright, lively, and flirtatious music. Dancers tapped their toes, bent and twisted in time with the music as they worked to keep their muscles ready, but not so much as to overtire themselves.

Then a pause and the first dancer ran on stage, Hillarion the huntsman who loved Giselle from afar. He performed a brief and undemanding solo, leaving a nosegay on the porch of Giselle’s “house.”

Duke Albrecht leaped on stage, resplendent in red and gold cloak and be-plumed cap, followed by his more ordinarily dressed servant. Albrecht shed his cloak, cap, and sword, revealing a handsome leather tunic symbolic of the hunt he pursued, and yet common enough to disguise his noble heritage.

As if any costume could disguise his tall and regal bearing. The blond dancer was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Twenty years ago I might have pursued him.

He leaped and bounded across the stage, landing frequently in front of Giselle’s door with heartfelt pantomime. Then Giselle, wearing a duplicate of the automaton’s blue and white costume, stepped through the door and danced to meet her one true love.

I gasped at the charm of the girl dancing the role. She betrayed her emotions with delicate flicks of her glance followed by demure lowering of her gaze, by intimate touches of her hand against Albrecht’s sleeve, and the pure joy of dancing in perfect synchronization with him.

No automaton could imitate that joy.

Part of my attention strayed backstage, where Lady Ada continued to fine tune the codex. Mr. Babbage stomped around her with oil can, screwdriver, and tuning fork ready for any task.

Mostly I watched the dance, amazed that human bodies could perform the feats of athleticism with such grace as demanded by the ballet.

In my imagination I lived with the dancers the idealized carefree celebration of a peasant festival. I shared the wonder of young love with Giselle and Albrecht. I wanted to curse when proud Princess Bathilde entered with her hunting party and accepted hospitality from Giselle and her mother. All the women wore riding habits in the latest fashion with top hats tilted at the precise rakish angle.

And then to heap irony upon betrayal they danced together sharing the specialness of the newly betrothed. They compared the handsomeness, and loving attention of their men, not realizing they were engaged to the same man.

Lady Ada closed up the back of her mechanical dancer. “It’s ready,” she whispered to Mr. Babbage on a satisfied sigh.

“Activate her,” he ordered. “We need her to dance as much as possible for the experiment to work.”

“For heaven’s sake, Charles. Let the understudy at least finish the first act. This may be her only chance to dance this role and she deserves it,” Lady Ada admonished him. She patted the pocket of her leather apron for the key.

I had to get the key away from her.

But keys can be duplicated. The codex on the other hand were complex, and had to be hand punched so that no two were ever alike. The chances of a replacement working as well as the original were slim.

On stage Giselle learned the truth about her lover and began to go mad. She danced a sad echo of the earlier pas de deux in broken and jerky attempts to deny the truth.

Chills began to crawl along my flesh. More than just dancers had come to this rehearsal. I saw misty forms gathering in the flies above the scenery. The same talent that gave me the occasional true vision also allowed me to sense the presence of the Wili.

The dark haired girl in the Spanish shawl came up behind me. “It’s so sad,” she sniffed.

“Why aren’t you in costume, on stage?” I asked, jerked out of the pathos occurring on stage and the gathering storm of emotion above us.

“Oh, I’m not a dancer. I came looking for Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace. I have a packet of messages for her from George Fraser. Are you she?”

I snorted. “Do I look like the wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom?” Well actually, the fineness of my gown and black lace were costly and quite fashionably cut by the same modiste as used by the Queen’s ladies in waiting.

A quick glance at Lady Ada and I knew why the young lady had made the mistake. In her plain brown gown of sturdy linen and her leather apron, she could pass for any of the dressers and servants who worked backstage.

“Save the letters for now. I am one of Lady Ada’s agents. I have a job for you. Can you distract that woman while I steal the automaton’s key?”

“I think so.”

On stage Giselle stole Albrecht’s sword, which had been given back to him the moment Princess Bathilde claimed him as her own. She continued her mad dance as Albrecht and Hillarion tried desperately to get the weapon away from her.

Too late. Giselle ran the blade through her body. A blossom of red silk scarves streamed from the “wound.” A collective gasp rose from the cast. The music paused.

Giselle stumbled forward a few more steps in the last parody of life, then collapsed into her mother’s arms.

Albrecht erupted in an angry dance of grief and blame. He brow beat Hillarion for betraying him, his servant for bringing Bathilde to this village, Bathilde for not being Giselle. He blamed everyone for Giselle’s death except himself.

From my angle I could tell Giselle held the blade beneath her arm, clutched tight to her side. She fought to keep her breathing shallow, not betraying that she actually lived. The audience could well believe she had killed herself.

The curtain sank down from the flies and the dancers all scurried away to prepare for the second act while stage hands reset the stage to a woodland with a fresh grave and marker.

“I’m Emma,” the girl beside me said, shouting into my ear to be heard above the noise of the steam engine shifting sets and sending tendrils of steam upward upon the stage manager’s command.

“And I am Madame Magdala, proprietress of the Book View Café and agent provocateur of Lady Ada, Countess Lovelace.”

We shook hands.

“Tell me are you acquainted with the Abbess of the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration?” she asked during a lull in the commotion.

Somewhat shocked by this girl’s connection to an old friend who once gave me refuge, I replied curtly. “Of course.”

Emma nodded agreement willing to say as little as possible about connections. “I’m thinking I could replace Mr. Fraser as an agent of Lady Lovelace now that he’s...um...dead.”

“Georgie dead? Oh my. I knew he’d come to a bad end but I’d hoped he would survive his current mission. He was one of my favourites. A bit cheeky and forward, but a damned good agent.”

“Damned is right,” she muttered darkly. Then she brightened and looked me directly in the eye. “My thoughts exactly.” She flashed me a grin akin to George Fraser on one of his better days.

“Come, we must get that key.”

Too late. Lady Ada inserted the notched instrument into the centre of an artificial rose on the automaton’s waist corsage. Its hands came to life first, flexing fingers, then hands and arms. It rose up on pointe, barely needing the special dance shoes to support the body.

Lastly the eyes blinked and a bit of animation came to the mouth.

It betrayed no emotion. How could it duplicate the innocent joy of Giselle at the beginning and the sad madness at the end?

I stopped my progress through the backstage maze and held Emma back with my hand. “We have to try something else.”

The engines whistled, releasing pent up steam.

The automaton winced and slapped its hands over the imitation ears.

I remembered the butler at Lord Reedstone’s home deliberately creaking the stairs in an annoying pattern. I remembered my own steam whistle in the café as a precaution to detect artificial beings.

I had an idea.

“Wait here Emma. When you can, steal the key!” I dashed off for the orchestra pit.

The musicians stretched and chatted. A few took sips from flasks. The conductor paced. He paused here and there to make notations on a musical score, to hum a note for a violinist to retune, to pat a flautist on the back for a job well done.

I wanted that flute. Too many men stood together blocking my access. Instruments are expensive, they’d not give one over to an outsider, despite my connection to Countess Lovelace and Charles Babbage who had put up the production money.

I tapped my foot to the rhythm the drummer sketched on his instrument.

As the stagehands moved off with their imitation forest in position, the dancers took their places and technicians hooked a flying harness to the soloist who would dance the role of Myrta, queen of the Wili.

Carlotta danced among the corps de ballet, having been demoted from the starring role now that the mechanical dancer had been repaired. She scowled, thrusting her toe shoes into the rosin box and grinding the yellow crystals angrily.

The ballerinas now wore elegant ball gowns made of filmy, green tinged tulle, cut to mid calf, a tad shorter than a fashionable gown, so they wouldn’t trip on the layers. With a wide neckline and puffy short sleeves, they could have worn those costumes to any grand party in the city. Except that each of them had a pair of tiny wings, more tulle stretched over fine wire, attached to the back of the dress.

They looked exactly like the woodcut in the book of German folklore.

Lady Ada guided her automaton to the dressing room to change her costume for the second act.

We had to wait. I needed that dancer on stage, the only place it would be separated from Lady Ada’s protective presence.

The orchestra and dancers took their places. I edged behind the percussion section, avoiding the man with small hammers poised above the chimes. His concentration riveted upon the conductor and his score. I and the huge kettle drums remained well behind his peripheral vision.

Act two began. The engines beneath the stage pumped out steam that drifted about the stage in clumps, hot and smelling of the sulfurous coal that spawned it. The sensation was almost like being inside a laundry.

Myrta in her harness flew across the stage. The audience glimpsed her briefly between two sets. Clever lighting darkened the area above and behind her, making the chain that held her disappear from view. Then she came back the other way, closer to the front, looking more real and substantial. Then a third time near the proscenium and lower until she landed soundlessly on pointe. She took tiny steps that made her seem to float between trees. Behind one of them a stage hand slipped the hook off her harness. The steam thinned.

The engine continued to throb.

Hastily I searched what I could see of the backstage area for indications of the lever for the stage manager to release steam when he needed, or when the boiler became too full and tense.

Emma wandered about, also seeking something.

A hunting party led by Hillarion the huntsman entered from stage right, lost in the dark woods. He’d delayed the nobles’ sport too long. Midnight approached. They all shivered in dread as the mist thickened and forms moved within the concealing steam. When they hurried off, the hunting party did not notice the mound of a new made grave upstage, far left. A cross with the name Giselle marked it.

The Wili entered, filling the forest glade. They danced in sad, silent groups, delicate, ethereal ghosts. Their wings fluttered and some of them rose up, flying. The music became as much a part of them as the steps, haunting. Gentle notes soared and played, suggesting new images, giving the dance completion.

I gasped in awe at the beauty and precision of the dance and the staging, and hoped to view the entire thing uninterrupted on another night. The music became more intense.

The Wili gathered around Giselle’s grave. The automaton rose up from the grave, dressed as a Wilis, complete with filmy wings. She danced with them, her face as blank and free of emotion as I expected. She didn’t even have the serenity of her sister Wili.

Then three of the dancers herded Hillarion back into the clearing. Over the next few minutes they forced him to dance with them in ever increasing speed. They pushed him around and around, prodding him to continue when he flagged. Limp and exhausted he gripped his chest and collapsed into a marvellous stage death.

The satisfaction, almost glee, on the faces of the Wili did not reach the silver shadow dancer. But she lifted her gaze from her own feet to the motionless man. And then she stared upward, into the lingering clouds of steam.

I saw what she saw, movement. Mysterious shadows, transparent forms that might be the outlines of women.

The true Wili waited.

Not much time now.

Giselle danced her solo of welcome into the sisterhood of the Wili.

And then Albrecht entered carrying a bouquet of flowers. He searched about, unaware of the Wili or of Giselle. He placed the flowers on her grave and knelt in true regret.

The Wili pounced upon him.