CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
“His poulticing may have been rudimentary, but his stitching was first-rate.
Do you happen to know what size needle he used?
I should think it was an embroidery needle rather than darning, but I should very much like to be sure.”
Stoker gave me a sour look.
“I believe it was the sharpened quill of a porcupine.
Are you quite finished with your inspection?”
I straightened, brushing off my skirts.
“I apologize, but you did introduce the subject yourself.
You needn’t hold the handkerchief there any longer.
Unless you suffer from some sort of bleeding disorder, I suspect you have clotted by now.”
He handed back the bloodied handkerchief and I slipped it into my pocket with the bottle of calendula oil.
“All finished.
I will leave you to remove yourself from the trousers as best you can.
On second thought, I had best leave the calendula oil with you.”
I gave him the oil and the handkerchief with a smile as I left.
· · ·
Salome’s tent was almost precisely as I could have imagined—a sensuous bower of draped silks heavily perfumed with incense.
But I had not pictured the stockings hung up to dry or the litter of dirty handkerchiefs and soiled chemises.
A gilt pasteboard box of bonbons stood open on a little divan, the sofa scattered with the remnants of the confections, here a shred of coconut, there a scrap of candied peel.
She motioned me to sit, and I brushed them aside to settle next to a heap of crumpled fashion magazines.
I was not surprised she harbored a tendresse for Mr. Stoker, I reflected grimly.
Their personal habits were frighteningly similar.
She began to rummage through her trunks.
“So, how do you like the traveling life?”
she asked.
“It must make a change for you.”
“How can you tell?”
She shrugged one languid shoulder.
“One can always tell a newcomer to this life.”
“It is interesting,” I told her.
She lifted her head to give me a scornful look.
“I should have known butter would not melt in your mouth.
You are not the sort of woman to speak her mind, to speak with passion,” she said, flinging her arms wide in a gesture that Bernhardt herself would have thought overdone.
I found her assessment of me amusing, but there was little point in disabusing her of it at this stage.
I had discovered in my travels that people can seldom resist correcting those they believe to be less knowledgeable than themselves, and it occurred to me I might use this to my advantage to learn a little more about my erstwhile husband and his current predicament.
Salome was clearly relishing the role of tempestuous lover pitying the placid wife, and it seemed that pandering to her sense of self-importance would be a simple matter indeed.
“Oh, I beg you will not speak of passion,” I murmured.
“I should hardly know what to think.”
For an instant I wondered if I had laid on the disingenuousness with too heavy a hand, but I was soon relieved upon that score.
Salome flicked me another of her scornful glances and even managed to curl her lip.
It was an impressive performance.
“That is because your blood is cold.
I cannot believe Stoker has married a woman like you,” she burst out.
“A man like that, with so much fire in him, he is like a bull when he is roused, so proud, so sensual.”
Her eyes took on a nostalgic gleam, and I smothered a yawn.
She was so utterly predictable, I found it impossible that Stoker had not tired of her histrionics within a fortnight.
But I merely dropped my gaze and darted an innocent glance up at her.
“You have known him so much longer than I,” I began modestly.
“You must understand him much better than I could hope to.”
“This is true,” she said, fairly exuding triumph as she bent to rummage in her trunks again.
“Then you must know what grudge Colosso bears against him,” I ventured, scarcely daring to hope she would take the bait.
But Salome could not resist the opportunity to flaunt her greater knowledge over me.
She rose, one hand to her hip.
“Of course I know!
It is because of Baby Alice.”
“Baby Alice?”
She rolled her eyes heavenward.
“Truly, does your husband tell you nothing?”
She heaved a sigh.
“Stoker was with the show when he was a boy.
For half a year he traveled, learning the knives and conjuring.
Then he went away for a long time, but always he comes back to see us, particularly me,” she said, giving me a lascivious grin.
“The last time he came was four years ago.
We had not seen him in a very long while, and when he came, he was so different, we almost did not know him.
He was scarred from an accident in Brazil, and he did not know if he would keep his eye.
And his spirit, it was broken.
He did not even want to see me,” she said, curling her lip.
“He kept to himself, juggling Indian clubs and rigging the ropes in exchange for his keep only.
He talked to no one except Baby Alice.”
“Who was she?”
Salome flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture, a goddess brushing aside a flea.
“She was a nobody—a freak born without legs from the knees down.
The professor, he dresses her in infant’s clothes and puts her in a pram, and she is billed as ‘Baby Alice, the Adult Infant.’
But Alice does not like this, and she complains to Stoker.
One day, when he is fishing in the river, he has an idea.
It took him months, but he created for her a tail, like a fish—all silver and green and pink.
With it she can swim, she is free, like a mermaid.”
“How intriguing.
Did it work?”
“Of course it worked!
Stoker has gifts in his hands,” she said a trifle dreamily.
She was lost for a moment—no doubt in a haze of indecent memories, an impulse I understood only too well.
I cleared my throat to bring her back to the subject at hand.
“It must have changed Baby Alice’s entire life,” I surmised.
“It might, but the professor, he will not hear of it.
Baby Alice makes too much money for him to consider losing her.”
“What happened then?”
She shrugged.
“Stoker helps her to leave.
She finds a place in another show earning fifty pounds a week and even Mr. Barnum is interested in her.
And the professor does not forget.
He has been losing money ever since she left, and for this he blames Stoker.”
She turned again to her trunks as I thought about her story.
“That does not explain Colosso’s resentment.”
“He loved Baby Alice,” she said, her tone bored.
Clearly other people’s love affairs were of little interest compared to her own, and she left the conversation there.
It was enough.
I understood both the professor’s resentment and Colosso’s, and I marveled that Stoker had chosen to come here of all places, where enemies surrounded him.
Salome rose, her arms laden with garments, and began tossing the clothes onto my lap in a pretty heap of color.
“A blue costume—it ought to be purple with those eyes of yours, but blue will do well enough.
And a dash of color for the train.
Ah, here it is!
Cherry,” she said, emerging with an armful of taffeta.
“So the color trails behind you when you move.
Try it on.”
She bustled me behind a screen, thrusting clothes at me.
“What about this green?
No?
Perhaps green is not your color.”
Green was most decidedly
not my color, but I was too busy wrestling with the costume she had provided to discuss the matter.
The blue garment was a sort of extended bodice that covered the essentials—barely.
It joined between the legs to conceal one’s modesty but left the limbs bare, and the neckline plunged dramatically, revealing the shoulders completely.
Salome was still sorting through costumes.
“Scarlet?”
“I think the blue will do nicely,” I told her, emerging from behind the screen.
Her eyes widened and she gave a nod.
“It is good.
The décolletage is perfect,” she said, eyeing my bosom.
She circled around me slowly, scrutinizing me from head to heel, her expression growing more sour by the second.
“You are a striking-looking woman,” she pronounced finally, her eyes narrowing.
“Tell me the truth.
What are you doing with Stoker?”
I summoned a newly wedded simper and batted my lashes in a revolting display of sentimentality.
“I love him.”
She snorted by way of response.
“No, you do not.
Otherwise you would ask me about him, how well I know him.
And I know him
very well,” she said, her expression dreamy.
“Stoker’s past amours are of no interest to me,” I told her.
“And that is how I know you do not love him!”
she cried, striking at her chest.
“A woman’s heart is not satisfied without knowing such things.”
I was not of a mind to debate with her on the subject, so I merely gave her a noncommittal smile and stroked the blue taffeta.
It was spangled with silver sequins and finished with tiny blue and silver glass beads.
“This is pretty.
Did you have it made in London?”
She gripped my arm suddenly.
“You need not pretend with me.
I know it hurts your heart to think of him with me.
You may ask me anything you like—anything at all.
I will have no secrets from you because we are women together.
And women must be strong against the ways of men.
Let us share our secrets.”
Her eyes burned with emotion, and her grip was starting to leave a mark upon my arm.
I extricated it gently and gave her a pat.
“You seem upset.
Shall I bring you a cup of tea?”
She plunged her hands into her hair, tearing at it.
“If I am upset it is because you do not wish to be friends.
You reject me.”
She looked suddenly forlorn, and I hastened to reassure her.
“Not at all.
I would be very happy to be your friend.
But I think if we are to be friends, we should put aside the lies.
To begin with, your name is not Salome, is it?”
She hesitated, then burst out laughing, dropping the Oriental accent and the portentous delivery in favor of an accent straight from the Chiltern Hills.
“No.
It’s Sally.”
“And where are you from, Sally?”
“Dunstable,” she said, a trifle sullenly.
“How did you know?”
I nodded towards her dressing table.
“You have a letter there addressed to Sally Barnes in care of the traveling show.
And, if you will pardon the observation, you were trying just a trifle too hard to feign exoticism.”
“It is my bit in the show,” she told me airily.
“I am Salome, an Eastern princess driven by misfortune to make her way in the world by dancing for the public.”
“And how much of your clothing do you take off?”
She gave me a bitter look and picked at a cuticle.
“Just down to my drawers and a sort of chemisette.
It’s all gauzy and Turkish-like.”
“Well, whatever the professor pays you, I hope it is enough,” I told her.
“Pays me!”
she snorted.
“He hasn’t paid me in a month.
If you ask me, he’s on his last legs with this show.
And then we’ll all of us be out on our ear.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
I made to change out of the costume, but she shook her head.
“Keep it.
You will need something for the act and blue makes me look bilious.
It suits you,” she said, her expression sulky.
“I meant what I said, you know.
I should like to be friends.”
Her gaze narrowed.
“And you’re really not jealous that I used to lie with Stoker?”
“No more than I am of the trousers he wears,” I said cheerfully.
She was not certain if she ought to take offense at that, but it was to her credit that she chose not to.
She shook her head.
“If he were my husband, I’d want to slit the throat of any woman he’d been with.”
“Then I suppose it’s a rather good thing you are not married,” I replied.
“Remind me to send you some literature on the free love movement.
I think you might find it illuminating.”
She looked me over again.
“You are an odd duck, missus.
A face like that, you could be on the stage, making more money than you could count.
You could have a duke, if you liked—or even that tubby Prince of Wales.
What are you doing with Stoker?”
she demanded again.
“I told you,” I said gently, “I simply adore him.
It was love at first sight.”
She gave a sharp crack of laughter.
“You lie worse than me.
I’ll find out what he is up to with you, missus.
There aren’t any secrets in this camp.
Not from me.”
“I shall consider that a warning.”