Chapter 10

My entire body ached, and it brought me so much pleasure. I had spent the last three days dancing, and I had not felt happier in weeks. Two of those days had been rehearsing with the dancers already established in Granjin's Travelling Fair, and I had found, to my astonishment, that I picked up the routine very quickly. The style of dance was not at all what I was used to, but since I was what Mother called a born dancer, I was able to adapt.

After my first dress rehearsal, I had met some of the other performers, including the beautifully muscled man with darkish skin who had been juggling fire. His name was Khazime, and both his parents were Persian, although he himself had been born in France after they had been forced to flee the country. He was pleasant enough, until he heard that I and my family would be joining the company.

"Have you signed a contract with Granjin?" He asked, his tone sharp.

"Not yet," I said, surprised by his attitude. "He said we would be signing one after the first three shows."

"Don't sign it." He snapped. "They call him Rumplestiltskin, get out of here while you still have the shirt on your back."

"Monsieur Khazime," I ran a hand through my hair, sounding as bewildered as I felt. "What are you talking about?"

"Come with me," he said brusquely, and I followed him into one of the tents that the performers called home. This one had a mattress on the floor in one corner covered with a dark red blanket, richly embroidered, and a daguerreotype of a woman holding a baby sat on a small table, next to a china bowl and a water jug. There was a smell in the air that made me think of the village church, and I realised I was smelling incense. This was obviously where Khazime slept, and I wondered if the woman and baby in the picture were his wife and child. Given the medium, it could have been his mother holding his infant self. I felt slightly uncomfortable, alone with this exotic man, and wrapped my shawl around my bare shoulders.

"Mademoiselle Danton," Khazime began. "May I ask why you want to work here?"

"We need the money," I said, deciding to go for the blunt truth. "I was a dancer, once upon a time. It's what I know. It's who I am."

"And your father…"

"My stepfather is an architect, but he has found it difficult to get work here in Normandy because of his… condition." I looked down at my hands. "We're… not a normal family, Monsieur. We have tried to be, but… maybe we will fit better in this world than in the one that we might prefer."

Khazime looked at me, his lips pressed together, eyes scanning my face.

"You'll come to no good here," he said quietly. "Granjin is not what he seems to be. If you sign a contract with him, there will be all sorts of little details in it that will mean he more or less owns you. I've been with Granjin's Travelling Fair for three years, Mademoiselle. I'm under contract for five. If I leave before my time is up, he can sue me for every penny I possess."

"Marguerite?" Someone outside was calling my name, and I turned.

"I have to go, I'm sorry."

Khazime caught hold of my arm.

"Don't sign anything, Marguerite," he told me. "You'll only regret it."

I nodded and he let me go, allowing me to exit the tent.

"Marguerite!" Erik turned just in time to see me emerge. "What are you doing?" His eyes turned flinty and his tone dangerous as I heard Khazime come out of the tent behind me. "In a man's personal tent, dressed like that?"

I have to admit, the costume I wore was rather revealing; my everyday corset and petticoat covered more of me, and I clutched the shawl tighter.

"We were just talking, stepfather," I said quickly. Erik blinked at the term, and I knew it was the first time I had addressed him directly as 'stepfather', but I wanted to let Khazime know who he was. "I believe Monsieur Khazime would like to speak with you about our engagement within the company."

Erik narrowed his eyes at the Persian, and then looked back at me.

"Get dressed," he ordered. "We leave in ten minutes."

I had obeyed as quickly as I could, but ever since then, Erik had been in a bad temper. When he, Mother and I had returned to the Danton house and started on a meal, he said that Khazime had given him the same warning that he had given me.

"Rest assured, anything we sign will be read extremely carefully. I may be seen as a devil but I have no wish to sign away my soul."

He had said nothing more on the subject, but his dark mood remained around him like a cloak he was unable to take off. In the night, I had woken to hear him crying out wordlessly in the dark, a single, sharp shout in the silence of the house. I had lain in my bed, listening, and heard no more. Perhaps the atmosphere of the travelling fair was bringing back memories of the young man he had been, caged and tormented for the entertainment of others. Perhaps he was suffering from a nightmare. As I listened, and heard nothing, I wondered whether the noise had not been an exclamation of suffering, but of pleasure, and felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I should not have such thoughts, and never about him.

The next morning, I came down for breakfast to find Erik sitting at the kitchen table in his shirt, trousers and cravat, his jacket draped across the back of the chair. He was holding a brown waistcoat, subtly patterned with roses, and was sewing on a button. It came as a shock, to see him doing something so domestic, and something that seemed so… beneath him. The Opera Ghost, the Angel of Music, doing minor repairs to his clothing? In a house with two women?

"Good morning," I said. "Where's Mother?"

"In bed," he replied without looking up from his needlework. "She's not feeling well."

"She's ill?" Worry flooded me.

"She has a slight cold; it is nothing that a day of rest cannot cure." He sounded annoyed.

"And you…?" I enquired.

"I am perfectly well."

"You seem… upset about something."

It was true. The way he sat, back straight, shoulders set and jaw clenched, made it appear as though he were about to lose his temper at any moment. He glowered down at the waistcoat.

"I said I am perfectly well."

I nodded, unconvinced, but decided not to press the issue. I made breakfast for the three of us as Erik slipped on the mended waistcoat and his jacket before smoothing down his wig in a gesture that had become familiar, part of his dressing routine. His mask was in place, the left side of his face freshly shaven. Not only did his skin appear smooth, but I saw a spot of shaving soap still remaining just below his left ear. I thought about reaching out to wipe it away for him, but remembered attempting to do something similar when Erik had suffered a nosebleed. He had assumed I was trying to take off his mask and threatened to pull off my arm; at the time he had meant it in all sincerity.

"You missed a spot of soap," I told him instead, indicating on my own face where the white mark was.

"Thank you," he wiped it away himself. "Give me the tray. I would like to speak to your mother alone."

"Oh," I felt a little crestfallen, standing there with Mother's breakfast tray in my hands. "I wanted to see her, make sure she was all right."

"I told you, she will be fine," Erik took the tray from me without difficulty. "You can see her before we leave, if she is not sleeping."

Left with no choice, I sat at the kitchen table, eating my breakfast alone, and pondering on Erik's attitude. Mother had been right when she compared him to Claude Giry in that both slipped into lapses of depression that no amount of coaxing would lift. Perhaps it was the same black wave that I felt descend over me from time to time, the sensation of worthlessness and hopelessness, that nothing could be whole again. Perhaps Erik's broken heart would end him, if he could not find a way to live without Christine.

"You are pensive, Meg," Erik said as we walked away from the Danton house, side by side. It had been decided that we would not be using our remaining horse, since a walk through the woods would take about fifteen minutes.

"So are you," I observed, pulling my cloak close around me. It was still early in the morning and the breeze was chilly. "I'm… nervous. Today will be the first time I've performed in months, I always get butterflies in my stomach before a show. Of course, this will be different."

"Substantially," Erik nodded, buttoning his coat closed. "The audience of a fair like this is more or less the opposite of those who attend opera."

His expression twisted for a moment in distaste, and I could not help but smile. These were Erik's roots, literally, but through his own hard work and talent, he had climbed the intellectual ladder. Had it not been for his deformity, he might have climbed the social ladder too, mixed with the great and the good. How diverse things might have been for him; it could have been he, and not Raoul, who had become the new patron of the Opera Populairé in Paris. He might have courted Christine openly. I sighed.

"What sort of things should I be expecting today?"

"Noise," he replied. "People will talk through your performance, they will shout at you, probably criticise or demean you." He frowned. "I am not sure, Meg. You have beauty on your side; perhaps things will not be so harsh."

He had fallen into his own natural stride, his shoulders hunched and head bowed in thought, and I had to trot to keep abreast of him.

"Not so fast," I complained. "I've only got little legs! I can't match your pace, long-shanks!"

His head turned towards me and he stopped to let me catch up to him.

"What did you just call me?"

I was uncertain whether his expression was surprised, angry or amused.

"It was a nickname of one of the Kings of England," I explained. "Because he was tall. I read it in one of my books."

"Was the book in English?"

"Yes."

"Ah, so I assume you have been practicing the language."

I groaned. "It's hard, Erik! I don't have the affinity for languages that you have, and I have been trying to practice this dance for most of my waking hours. I'm afraid I'll get it all wrong. That people will laugh."

"They will laugh," he said. "You are there to entertain; you must not take it personally."

"Didn't you take it personally?"

I wished I hadn't asked the moment the question escaped my lips, but Erik's only apparent reaction was a slight stiffening of his shoulders as he started to walk again, matching his pace to mine.

"It is different. I was there to be humiliated, tormented. The whole point was that I take is personally."

I swallowed. "I'm sorry, Erik. I know this must be difficult for you."

He didn't reply, and we continued the walk together in silence. He was nervous too, I realised, maybe even afraid of what today would bring. It was his pick pocketing of the manager that had earned us a trial run with the company, and Erik would be performing similar tricks and illusions. Should the public enjoy them, Granjin had said he would bill Erik as 'The Masked Magician'. I hoped sincerely that the mask would remain on and that Erik would not be made to suffer the way he had been in the past. I thought it unlikely, but Khazime's warning that signing a contract with Granjin would do us no good, gave me pause. Erik must be far stronger now, both physically and mentally, than when he had been a plaything to the Italian gypsies who had captured him nearly twenty years ago.

We arrived at the meadow holding the fair to find the entrance roped off, a notice stating the opening and closing times. We traversed it—Erik leaping over the rope with the agility of a cat and me ducking under it—and found that most of the performers were still preparing for the day. Small fires were everywhere, a toddler was running around wearing a shirt and nothing else, shrieking with laughter as he chased a small dog, and the smell of breakfast cooking filled the air. It was just blocking out some of the less savoury smells as well. The people who worked there, off-duty now, looked either more or less extraordinary depending on the circumstances. Those who wore outrageous costumes and swallowed swords or walked on stilts looked like normal people in regular clothes, which threw into stark contrast those who had physical differences. The dwarf I had tripped over noticed us and tipped his hat, the bearded lady scooped up the half-naked toddler and gave him a smack on the bottom before wrestling him into a pair of trousers, and to my astonishment, I saw the tattooed woman painting the designs onto her skin with practiced care.

"Good luck," Erik said to me as we reached the point where we had to part.

"Will you watch?" I asked anxiously.

"I shall try," he nodded. "Antoinette has every faith in you, you know that."

I nodded, swallowing hard in an attempt to dislodge the lump of nerves that had caught in my throat.

The dancers were all in one tent with tables pushed together by one canvas wall, each holding a mirror. Oil lamps were suspended from the ceiling, and the place smelled of greasepaint, sweat and alcohol. If I were completely honest with myself, the atmosphere was not dissimilar to the dressing room back at the Opera Populairé. My costume was little more than a blue corset and a skirt made of strips of filmy material, that left little to the imagination. It was no wonder Erik had been surprised when he had seen me still wearing it and in conversation with Khazime. The girls were welcoming enough, speaking in a range of dialects, accents and even languages; they were used to members of the company entering and leaving with little or no notice and had welcomed me into their ranks and routines. The news that I was a classically trained ballerina had provoked mixed responses, from scorn and mutters about my snobbery, to awe, to worries that I would not be able to do this sort of routine. To my relief, I had proven them wrong.

That day, I danced the same routine six times over the course of eight hours, and at least once, I thought I saw Erik watching from the crowd. It was difficult to tell because of the number of people all pressed together. We performed inside a large tent on a wooden stage set about four feet above the level of the ground, and the audience swelled substantially when it rained for about twenty minutes during the early afternoon. Our tent was very close to the beer tent, and as the day went on, the effects of the alcohol became more obvious. The audience was louder; people shouted praise and criticism at the stage in almost equal measure, although some also booed us. I had never been booed while performing an opera, and it stung my pride. One man, almost paralytic with drink, tried to climb onto the stage and I wished it were higher from the ground and further away from the audience. I had never really thought of the orchestra pit as a safety measure before, but all we had now was a rickety piano on one corner of the stage. Minnett, the lead dancer, planted a high-heeled foot in the drunkard's chest and pushed him back into the crowd with little more than a flicker. This was obviously a regular occurrence for her and nothing she could not handle. Although she was a lithe, dark-skinned beauty who looked as though she had stepped out of a Grecian myth, I got the impression that she was more than capable of looking after herself. The drunk man fell, landing on his back with his eyes closed and mouth open, and the rest of the crowd simply continued their noise and attentions around him as though he were an especially deep puddle of water that they did not want to step in.

The whole experience was surreal for me, and by the time I made it back to the dressing tent, my head was whirling. I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, only stopping long enough to take several long drinks of water, and to relieve myself behind a tree. If I had thought classical ballet was hard work, this was… well, not harder, exactly, but a world away from what I knew. It was coarse and vulgar, another type of life and culture that I was unexposed to. I would have to grow a thicker skin, I realised, and as Erik said, not take the comments thrown towards the stage personally. This had all been my idea in the first place… we needed the money.

I changed out of the flimsy excuse for costume and back into my own clothes as quickly as I could, wanting to find Erik and see his performance before his final show of the day ended. The patchy sunshine of the afternoon was blending into the deep blues and violets of twilight, and oil lamps high on hooked poles had been lit to illuminate the fair. The noise had not lessened, though, and there were far more adults around, fewer children. I knew roughly the area Erik would be in, and ventured that way, wrapping my cloak around me and following the sounds and lights to the area where he was performing.

Erik did not have an enclosed tent or stage, as the dancers had done, but a plank of wood across the damp grass under an open-sided awning which would only keep the rain off if it fell straight down. I joined the crowd only a few minutes into his act, and was pleased to see that he had attracted a good number of people. He had created a crude 'Masked Magician' sign himself, and was indeed giving off an air of mystery.

He was dressed entirely in black, from boots to cravat, the clothes making him look lean and athletic, and was wearing black leather gloves and a wig the colour of jet. His mask was also black, a design that I had never seen before. It enclosed his face totally, but had a hinged jaw so that the mouth opened when he spoke. It was not dissimilar to the mask he had worn while costumed as the Red Death for the New Year's Masquerade ball, only in negative. I could also see that he had coloured the lids and skin around his eyes in black kohl, making the blue and green irises seem to shine out from the darkness. If I had not been so familiar with his voice, I might not have recognised him.

For all his years away from the stage, Erik had not lost his touch. It was partly his voice, the persona of the Opera Ghost which he drew around him like the cape he wore, the hypnotic tones that drew people in. Mostly, however, it was his talent at slight of hand, making me wonder absently if he had ever stolen anything from me that I had failed to miss. He moved along the front row of the crowd, pick-pocketing them and returning the stolen items a few minutes later. He returned one man's pocket watch inside an empty beer bottle, leaving both me and the watch's owner baffled as to how it could have gotten in or out without smashing the glass. He created a rat out of thin air and was able to tell one woman the name of her sweetheart. As his act came to a close, he looked directly at me, one eyelid flickering so fast that I might have missed it.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" He cried. "I hope you have enjoyed the show this evening, among the many other wonders that Granjin's Travelling Fair has to offer! This young lady, Marguerite, is one of the dancers, I am sure you appreciated her performances! A round of applause for the girl please!" He beckoned me towards him, apparently jovial but with a look in his eyes that made me think it would be unwise to disobey. I joined him on the plank of wood, and he pulled a scarlet rose from the hood of my cloak.

"Mademoiselle," he presented the rose to me, taking one of my hands in both of his and bowing low as if kissing the back of it. The audience were still applauding.

"Well done," I whispered.

"I am the Masked Magician, ladies and gentlemen!" Erik straightened, turned and bowed to the audience with a flourish. "I give you thanks and bid you farewell!"

Before I could step away, he grasped me tightly around the waist, billowing his cape around me as he dropped something onto the plank with his other hand, and smoke blossomed around us. In an instant he had lifted me a few inches into the air, and moved us both behind the 'Masked Magician' sign, where we would be out of sight of the audience. From their point of view, it would look like the two of us had simply vanished in that puff of smoke.

"Be still," he whispered into my hair as he held me to him, his body close against mine. I could feel his breathing against my scalp, hear his heartbeat with my head pressed against his chest.

"Congratulations," I whispered back, as quietly as I could. "Really. You were perfect."