Mending Horses (20 page)

Jonathan hooted with laughter.

“Where'd you pick them two up? One of your ladies pin a coupl'a bastards on you?” Fred asked.

Jonathan puffed a cloud of smoke between himself and Fred. “They're mine, I guess. But not by blood.”

“Got yourself a pair of foundlings, then, huh?”

“We-l-l-l, I'm not exactly sure who found who. They just sort'a happened along, and we kind'a stuck. I got to admit, having a coupl'a young fellas along makes for good company.”

Fred leaned over the mirror and tilted his head to see if he'd gotten all the makeup off. “Where'd you find the girl?” He
scowled and deepened his voice. “You cannot keep the truth from Prince Baswamati.” He rubbed his hands over each other as if casting a spell. “She's good,” he said, returning to his normal voice. “Almost fooled me. So, are them two brother and sister?”

Jonathan shook his head. “They only quarrel like they was.”

“Females are always trouble.” Fred suddenly seemed engrossed in using a tiny pair of scissors to scrape away the traces of makeup clinging to his cuticles. Without looking up, he said, “I'd be happy to take her off your hands.”

“Wouldn't you just?” Jonathan narrowed his eyes.

“Anyone else, I'd try to fox 'em into giving her away. But you, friend, name your price and you can have it.”

“She's not mine to sell.”

“You got a bond on her? Seems a peculiarish sort of indenture, giving a girl to a—what line of work are you in these days, anyway?” Fred unpinned the towel and tossed it aside, then shrugged out of his dressing gown. While seven years had softened Jonathan's middle and grayed his hair, Fred's body was still lean and well-muscled.

“I'm in the peddling trade now,” Jonathan said. “I got Billy from a father who's even more of a reprobate than you are.”

“So she belongs to him, then?” Fred poured water into a basin and soaped his hands to remove the last of his makeup.

“She belongs to herself. You want to bargain, you'll have to talk to her direct.” As a flicker of anticipation crept across Fred's face, Jonathan added, “Of course, I'll advise her, what with my many years of professional expertise and my intimate knowledge of your character.”

“All right, Jonny. You got me.” Fred shook his head in temporary defeat. “I'll wager you make a tidy profit out'a that girl and her voice.”

“I don't keep her for the profit.”

Fred raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Aren't you the one who taught me there's no profit in sentiment?” He bent over the basin and scrubbed his face. “What about the boy?” he asked. “He got any particular qualities other than big ears and bad looks?”

“He's mad for horses. Good with 'em, too. And no, he ain't for sale, neither.”

“What do you take me for?” Fred raised his head, bearded in white lather.

“A cheat and a rapscallion and a scoundrel. Damned if I know how I ever come to call you a friend.”

“Because underneath it all I have a good heart.” Fred laid a dripping hand on his chest.

“Underneath it all you're still a cheat and a rapscallion and a scoundrel. But I'm more fool than not, and there ain't no accounting for taste.”

“Don't s'pose there is,” Fred said, bending back down to rinse his face. “Which is why I'm tempted to make you an offer in spite of your pigheadedness.” He groped for a towel. Jonathan put it in his hand. “You still got your fiddle?”

Jonathan nodded.

“Travel with us for a bit. You can peddle whatever it is that you peddle. If you or your . . . traveling companions feel minded to tread the boards, you can name your terms. It'll be like the old times again.”

“The old times wasn't always so good, as I remember.” Jonathan settled into one of the chairs and uncorked the bottle.

“Well, the new times ain't, either. It's a poor show that's got only one horse act in it.”

“Looks like you've done pretty well for yourself here.” Jonathan poured a glass of amber liquid and raised it to his lips. It wasn't the rum or cider he'd expected, but brandy. “Smells like it, too,” he said before taking a sip. Brandy, all right, and damn good brandy, at that. “You've even got real talent working for you. Your Italian songbird sounds like the genuine article.”

“Actually, she's Quebecois. But who'd pay to hear a Canadian songbird? No, they all got to come from across the ocean.” Fred rummaged through the chest of drawers and pulled out a clean shirt.

“Canadian or Italian or Hottentot, you can't hear much better in Boston or New York.”

“If only you knew. You try running this show with an Italian songbird who's broody.”

“Flatter her. Humor her. Buy her a bauble, and she'll get over being broody.”

“It ain't that sort of broody,” Fred said as he pulled his shirt on over his head.

Jonathan's first “Oh” was accompanied by a puzzled frown. The conjurer gave him a meaningful glower while pulling the front of his shirt out away from his body. Jonathan's mouth dropped open in comprehension.

“But surely with her—it won't—I mean, she's so—” Jonathan's hands drew an outline in the air about the size of Madame Staccato. “Well, it won't show for quite a bit. . . . Will it?”

“Showing ain't the problem. We can hide the showing. But she's so worn out she can't get up the wind for the high notes any more. And that's on top of puking her throat raw.”

“She was in splendid voice this afternoon.”

Turning one of the chairs backward, Fred straddled it and leaned his forearms across its back. “You caught her on a good day,” he said, topping off Jonathan's glass. “She can't get closer to high C than A flat, and she's going down steady. In a month, my Italian songbird'll be singing bass.”

“It is a dilemma, friend. A dilemma indeed. Is there, um, a Monsieur Staccato?”

“That's the worst of it.” Fred pulled the cloth from the basket and tucked it into his collar napkinwise. “If only Neezer could marry her.”

“Neezer?”

“Professor Romanov. He was just Ebenezer Pruitt and two stumbling ponies before I made him into something. And he does this to me.” Fred took an apple from the basket. “It's a blow to my heart, Jonny,” he said, thumping his chest with the apple. “A blow to my heart.”

“Why not make the most of it? Professor Romanov woos the Italian songbird. The culmination of true romance on stage
before your very eyes. You could get 'em married in half a dozen towns before word got around.”

“Neezer can't marry her.” Fred bit into his apple with a vicious crunch.

“There's a Mrs. Pruitt?”

Fred nodded dismally. “I'm bound to lose one or the other of 'em before the month is out. And then what do I do with all them damn ponies?”

“The ponies aren't his?” Jonathan asked, taking a pie from the bottom of the basket.

“They were. But the damn fool don't know any better than to play dice with a mystic and conjurer. . . . And then there's the camelopard.”

“I wanted to ask you about that.”

“Dead. The morbid sore throat. What would you expect with a critter that's all neck? My guess is he was already sick when I got him; I thought the bargaining went too easy.” Fred opened one of the drawers in the dressing table and extracted a pair of plates, a serviette, and silverware that appeared to be actual silver. He gestured for Jonathan to serve out the pie. “You know how big a hole you got to dig to bury a thing like that? We'd still be digging yet.”

“You'd still be—uh—So, um, what did you do with him?”

“You seen that wagon 'round back? The green one?”

Jonathan nodded. “I figured it was for your costumes and gear and all that.” He scooped a bit of pie up with his knife and lifted it to his mouth.

“Well, it was.”

Jonathan stopped midbite.

“Now don't look at me like that, Jonny. It's only the skin and bones. He's cleaned up proper, doesn't smell a bit. First I thought I'd get him stuffed somewhere. But that'd be a hell of a thing to be dragging along, 'specially once the weather turns. So now I'm thinking to sell him to one of those zoological societies, maybe in New York. Let
them
stuff him, huh?”

Jonathan nodded, unsure whether to laugh or sympathize. Then a thought occurred to him. “Fred—”

“Mmm-hmm?”

“You said you kept the skin and bones. But what happened to—um—the rest of him?” The pie in Jonathan's plate didn't seem quite so appetizing anymore.

Fred straightened up and grinned. He put his pinky to his mouth as if he were picking his teeth with his fingernail. Then he rubbed his stomach.

“You didn't!”

“I had to get back some of my investment. Fed the carnivores and the whole company nearly a week and sold the rest. He was a little bit chewy, but not bad eating for all that.”

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.