The Twyning (15 page)

“Quoi? Pardon?”
he would shout, his face so close to theirs that they could smell the sickly scent of the pomade on his hair.
“Je n’y comprends rien!”

The girls ate once a day, and there was never much to the meal that they were given. Sometimes it was a watery soup with a slice of bread, now and then some boiled fish. Hunger became part of their lives. A great dancer must be
maig
r
e
— thin — Madame Irina would tell them.

Although she spoke to them and to any visitors in a strangled French accent, Madame Irina was no more French than they were, Catherine discovered. There was a rumor among the girls that she had once been a dancer, that when she was young she had caught the eye of a rich Frenchman and had run away to France with him. Now, it was said, all that remained of that life was a memory of how to speak French. After dark in the dormitories, the girls would joke about Madame, but in the hours of daylight, their teacher’s double life was never mentioned.

She had the power, each of them knew, to change their lives, one way or another. If a girl fell out of favor with Madame, she would soon disappear from the school, never to be heard of again. Sometimes a girl had answered back. Or, in spite of the meals, one might have put on weight. One girl was sent away because she had a birthmark on her neck.

“My girls must be
parfait
,” Madame Irina would say.

Petits rats
, she called them. Catherine had at first thought it odd that children doing something as beautiful as dancing should be described as little rats, but soon, like the other girls, she took the name for granted. She was a
petit rat
and that was all there was to it.

Most of the pupils at the Blavitsky School of Dance were older than Catherine. Sometimes, when there were no adults around, they would talk of the homes they had left. Among the girls who had been there for some time, there was a sort of hopelessness in these conversations — they seemed to Catherine like someone starving who dreamed of food. Pupils who were serious about becoming dancers, she discovered, were not expected to return home, even at Christmas.

“Chez vous? Ça n’existe plus!”
Madame said in class on her first day.
“Votre maison est la danse. C’est tout!”

Later, Catherine asked one of the other
petits rats
what those words had meant.

The answer haunted her. Your home no longer exists. Your house is dancing. That is all there is for you.

What had Mr. Knightley and Madame Irina agreed about her future? Catherine never found out. All she knew was that dancing became her life and her hope for the future, that the pupils were now her family.

Mr. Knightley had been right about one thing. Catherine was a natural dancer. She loved music, and when it played, it seemed to enter her muscles and bones, her hands, her feet, and her head. When she was dancing, she could say all the things that she was feeling without speaking a word. She soon became a star pupil of the Blavitsky School of Dance.

One day, Madame told Catherine’s class that the school had been asked to provide a troupe of children to play the part of dancing dolls in an opera in Paris. Catherine was among the
petits rats
who were chosen.

Soon afterward, almost a year after Catherine had last seen her mother, Mr. Ralph Knightley reentered her life, appearing at a student production.

As she danced, Catherine sensed him watching her, but later, when she hurried from the dressing room eager for news of home, Mr. Knightley had gone.

She asked Madame whether the gentleman would be returning.

“Gentleman?” Madame Irina had actually laughed. “ ’E is more zan a gentleman.
C’est ton oncle.
”

Catherine felt a chill of fear at the way those words were spoken, as if a very special secret were being imparted.
Ton oncle.
Her uncle? An uncle to take care of a
petit rat
? Uncle Ralph.

Madame Irina seemed to think that Catherine was disappointed that her new uncle had left without a word. She laid a tiny hand on Catherine’s arm. “Don’t worry,
chérie
,” she said. “You will see him in Paris. Your uncle will be staying there.”

There was jealousy in class. For some of the other girls, it seemed unfair that Catherine was not only going to Paris but had already found an uncle to look after her. It was not just to dance that they had been sent to the school. With an uncle, the lowliest
petit rat
had the chance to become a famous, great ballerina.

Lying awake that night, Catherine thought of her mother — of how she believed that nothing good could happen to her unless it was with the help of a gentleman.

No. Anything was better than that. Catherine felt within her the strength that she had on the dance floor. She slipped out of her bed, dressed in her warmest clothes, put her ballet shoes into the pocket of her coat, then went downstairs, opened a window, and slipped into the dark autumn night, leaving the Blavitsky School of Dance forever.

Her plan was simple. She would go home, find her mother, and tell her what had happened. Maybe they would face poverty and need, but at least they would be together and free.

With the help of the driver of a brewer’s dray who took pity on her, Catherine found her way back to the street where she lived.

But when she knocked on the door of the flat, there was no reply. An old man who lived downstairs told her that some months back, Mrs. Lewis had moved away. She had come into some money, he said, had become quite the little lady. He had no idea where she lived now.

As alone as anyone could be, Catherine was a child of the street. She learned to steal. She scavenged for rags on the waste tips. She discovered where to find scraps of food in the rubbish barrels behind the houses of rich people. The elegant, beautiful dancer who had dreamed of being a ballerina became a darting shadow of the streets and alleys.

Then, one evening, after falling asleep near Mrs. Bailey’s pie shop, where she sometimes waited out of sight in the hope of gathering scraps and presents from the shop’s customers, something very unusual happened to her.

Luck.

She met me. I saw her, asleep in a doorway, pink shoes held tightly in her hand.

I sat down beside her. We talked. I told her I knew a place where we could shelter.

“And that was how I became Caz.”

“That was how you became Caz.”

. . . I was lost. I was a courtier, at the center of power in the kingdom, and yet all I longed for was to be a taster. It was in my bones. It was my destiny. Alone in the Court of Governance, the vision of my first lesson in tasting with Alpa was with me every day.

Our job as tasters was simple but perilous. We would roam the world above, searching for food left by the enemy in obvious places, by the water’s edge, near a path, covered by stone. We smell. We use our tongues, our instinct as tasters, above all our training.

The time a taster is most likely to die is when he is learning about poison. I had seen older ratlings at the moment when they knew that death was upon them. They felt a strange burning in the throat, the first stab of pain in the stomach. Their eyes grew misty.

When the moment came for my first lesson, Alpa sent me to taste a pile of grain within a pipe. Its smell was irresistible. I ached with hunger. As I had been taught, I ran my nostrils across the grains, allowing the tiniest of touches with my tongue. In that instant, I knew. I turned and sprayed the grain, leaving the scent that would tell citizens all they needed to know.

I had done it. I had passed my first test. I could have been a taster. I wanted to go home.

All that had changed. I was in the Court of Governance, yet none of the courtiers revealed to me. I was at the center of power in the kingdom but was powerless to escape. Even before I was fully grown, I was lost.

Soon after Floke and Fang were released, something happened that strengthened my desire to leave the Court of Governance.

I had been making my way to the chamber where food was left for courtiers, when three rats crossed my path. Two of them worked for Swylar. The third, a hesitant older figure, walked between them. I thought I recognized him. As they approached, I heard a familiar revelation from the past.

— My name is not important.

Now I knew where I had seen this old rat. It had been he who had awoken me in the early hours and led me to where Floke and Fang were imprisoned. I looked at him, and asked:

— Where are you going?

One of his escorts replied. — He is returning to the Court of Warriors.

— Warriors?

I moved closer to them, mystified by what I had been told.

— Surely he is too old for fighting.

The old rat sniffed the air. — I am in need of reeducation, it seems.

The second escort nudged him onward.

I followed them, revealing as I went. — This is wrong. Wait! Why?

One of the guards faced me and, for a moment, seemed about to attack, before remembering that I was a courtier.

— Security.

His revelation was surly, yet uncertain, as if he were repeating a word that he had been told but did not quite understand. I held my ground.

— What security?

— He was unvigilant, a danger to the kingdom. He is in need of reeducation.

— Danger? What did he do?

The three rats were shuffling away from me. The second guard revealed casually as he went.

— If you have questions about security, maybe you should take them to Swylar.

— What is his name?

The old rat stopped walking. Ignoring a fierce nip from one of his escorts, he turned.

— My name is Steadfye.

Of course. It had to be Swylar who was behind this. He, who heard everything in the kingdom of Queen Jeniel, would know that Steadfye had helped me. The words the guard had used were to be heard every day in the court.

“Unvigilant,” “security,” “emergency,” “modern,” “safety from fear,” “reeducation,” “loyalty”: I knew what these terms meant — or rather, what they should mean. Now, though, I saw they had another meaning. They were a secret code among citizens who belonged.

Those who used them possessed loyalty.

Those who did not were being unvigilant.

The few who were foolish enough to ask questions were almost certainly in urgent need of reeducation. Few of the old guard had survived at court. Quell was still there, using the new language but with a look of distaste on his old face. Grizzlard, now a scuttling bundle of resentment, preferred to remain silent. He was, he knew, too famous within the kingdom to be expelled. Even among subjects, newly fearful of the future, the idea that the great Grizzlard required reeducation would cause alarm, perhaps even anger.

I was no hero myself. I learned to use the new words when appropriate, but now I knew that unless I could return to the Court of Tasting, I, too, would be reeducated. It was time to see Swyler.

The chamber I visited that night, now occupied by Swylar and his followers, had never been home to rats before. It was beneath an old culvert, a dark and rank place through which there ran a thin and regular trickle of human waste leaking from a nearby pipe. It was typical of Swylar to have found a good spot and to have taken it for himself.

Every courtier now knew that while Queen Jeniel was a busy and powerful ruler, it was Swylar who enforced her wishes. At court he had no title, but then he had little need for one. His power transcended titles.

I was no stranger to fear, but for reasons I had never questioned, I was not afraid of Swylar in the way that other courtiers were. Perhaps it was that if you had been to the world above, had seen the savagery of humankind at close quarters, then the power of a sleek and soft-skinned rat, even one favored by a queen, was less impressive than it might have been.

I was surprised to find, early in the evening, that the courtiers in Swylar’s chambers were still slumbering, their bodies tangled comfortably together in the dry part of the room.

For a moment, I stood before them, aware for the first time that there was a scent in the room I was unable to identify.

— Is Swylar here?

My revelation, when it came, expressed more confidence than I felt.

The bodies stirred. Several pairs of eyes shone from the hill of pelts. Those who ran with Swylar, I had noticed, had begun also to look like him, with the same sleek dark-gray skin, the same way of looking at you through narrowed eyes as if they had sensed something untrustworthy that no other rat could see. Slowly the bodies were peeling away from a central rat who had been all but obscured by them.

Swylar.

— Efren, the brave little ratling. What a pleasure.

— Can we be alone? — I asked.

As if in reply, Swylar raised his snout. — These are senior colleagues of mine, Loyter, Clonin, Slathe. I hope you are not telling me that you have secrets from them. This is no time for secrets. — Swylar gave a silky smile. — An emergency in the kingdom is a moment for sharing.

— I saw Steadfye.

Swylar yawned.

— Steadfye, Steadfye. Remind me again.