Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #28
Ten past six, and the graveyard that lies between the Grub and the Grit is fully dark, the thick cloud obscuring any light from moon or stars.
Belinda stands at the open window of her office, elbows on the sill, staring out over the black graves towards the Grub.
An updated list of things to do – the new LX girl’s contract, check October’s payroll, write out a notice for the next day off, get a plumber for that dodgy shower in the Grub – runs through her mind but she stays still, breathing deeply of the loam-rot smell wafting into the Grit.
Winter is her favourite season on The Apple and the Pearl.
Safer, statistically speaking, and easier to manage.
The Otherworld contracts to a cosy radius around the theatre and the train; the cast, crew and orchestra nestle inside that circle, waiting for spring.
All Souls’, and they’re stopped in this place to share earth with the restless dead.
Already November, and only one snatching all year.
She thinks of that poor lad’s parents, perhaps spending today at the freshly turned earth of his grave.
His father on the phone, voice cracked in shock.
The Crow sitting in her office in the Grub, glowering as it listened to her stutter apologies to the boy’s parents.
Does the Crow punish you after we lose somebody?
Mackie had asked, falteringly, one night after a bottle of wine.
And she had said, Of course not, it’s not a monster, because the truth was too complicated and too humiliating even for Mackie’s wise tenderness.
Percy Montgomery, cleaning his glasses so as not to have to look her in the eye: Each snatching adds a full cycle of the moon to your service here.
No, I didn’t tell you that and I deeply regret it.
The Crow would never have let me go otherwise.
They all think they’re safer after a snatching.
They think it works like some kind of pressure cooker, that after the thing’s blown it has to build up in tension again before someone else will disappear.
Belinda tries to disabuse the company of these silly notions: she is merciless about the fines and the curfews and the rules, passing on the Crow’s punishments to the rest of them because why should she be the only one to suffer indentured servitude?
She shuts the window and pulls down the blind. All Souls’. Still uncomfortably close to All Hallow’s Eve, hoof-prints near a grave and too much mist to see much beyond your hand. She opens her laptop and reads the newest email from the bell smith.
Yes, my daughter is very much enjoying university and somewhat interested in casting, though she doesn’t quite understand the full extent of the work yet. I will see you at Didcot Parkway on the 12th and I’m very much looking forward to it.
* * *
Six twenty-five, and the door to the musician’s green room opens.
There’s a commotion outside. Henry checks his slightly late watch – it says six twenty-three – and reaches into his bag for the extra roll he filled with a slice of cheese at lunch.
A long stream of musicians wander in, lugging their instruments, brushing rain off their jackets, exhaling garlic fumes of Gino’s lasagne.
There’s Jean, urgently typing a message on her phone.
Max, the second violin listening intently to Ellie the viola, nodding and making little sounds of agreement.
Steve roars something at Lance, who grins and goes to join the three fat musketeers, dragging David the harp along with him.
Henry takes a bite of the sandwich – it’s good cheese, he reluctantly decides, some kind of soft, herby, creamy thing – and watches Michael as he slumps in the corner among the tuxedos and evening dresses.
Across the room, a conversation is beginning on a favoured topic – what the music of The Apple and the Pearl would have sounded like five hundred years ago, a thousand, fifteen hundred.
Lance thinks the melodies would have been the same with only the arrangements following the musical fashions of the times, while Wilf the cellist has always maintained that while the basic story has been similar, there might not have even been music in other eras, let alone something recognisable as the score they play nightly.
Henry takes another bite of his sandwich.
He should have made himself another one. He’s hungrier than he thought.
* * *
Twenty-five minutes to seven and down on the stage a broom goes swish swish across the floor, tiny motes of dust flying from the brush into the air.
A pile of splinters and dirt gathers near the footlights, awaiting the attentions of the woman clad all in black who hunches over her broom.
She stops, bends slowly to peer at something she finds on the floor.
She picks it up between a thumb and a forefinger and puts it in her pocket.
Light a candle for the departed on All Souls’, the Crow thinks, light a whole fucking bonfire for your dead whether you’ve seen them into the Pearl or not, but if your loved one went to sing and dance in the Otherworld then there’s no candle for you, no body to bury, no name to speak aloud either.
The poor lass whose fella got took a moon ago.
Sad but she can’t show it and it breaks Crow’s heart, yes it does; and if the gates of Faerie weren’t locked to the Crow she would swoop in, yes she would, she would get the dancer lad and the French horn and any of the others taken, if still they dance and sing there.
You don’t want the Crow for an enemy, sweethearts, yes, that’s what the Belinda woman tells you as she pricks your little fingers for the Grub, but who does the Crow hate among the mortals?
Well that’s not a fair question, the Crow saves her bile for Fae creatures, the bastards and pledge-breaking ninnies like the fiddler.
Put his heart in a stew and ate it, plopped it right in the soup the cook gave and slurped it up, now he’s bound tighter and how does he like that?
But Crow takes no pleasure in pledge-breakers, no, Crow wants to keep the artistes happy, yes she does.
Tried so hard with the angel-fingered harp woman but all she wanted was to get back into a world which had never loved her, certainly not so well as Crow and the fiddler do.
The Grub needs a King and the Grit needs a Queen and no, the dancers playing dress-up each night are not enough, though the Mara girl and the Gregory man will play their parts tonight as well as any others Crow has ever seen.
But to have a King and a Queen back again!
A pair like Albert the fiddler and Hannah the piper who gave the nest a chick at long last – and kept The Apple and the Pearl safe with the blessing of a baby.
The midwife brought the meat of the afterbirth to Crow that night and down it went, all that bright blood into Crow’s belly to keep Faerie at bay a little longer.
Only two snatchings in the whole decade after the Jeanie girlie’s birth!
Percy Montgomery had danced himself a jig but of course they got slack and Faerie got hungry.
Magic got up and ran out the door, just like magic always does.
Who next to play King and Queen and give the Crow a chick?
The seamstress has a changeling in her belly, more’s the pity – Crow should warn Belinda – and the dancer lad who had a noble bearing is gone.
All Souls’, and Crow will let her beloved men and women of the theatre be with their dead for tonight.
Tomorrow will dawn as tomorrow always does and then Crow will set about finding another belly to hatch a chick for The Apple and the Pearl.
The wings are silent. The house lights throw a drab, murky light across the stage and the auditorium.
A caw in the direction of the lighting box and the house lights brighten a little.
The woman comes right to the front of the stage, and squints out at the auditorium.
Her gaze roves over each row of seats, each gilded carving and piece of stucco.
Satisfied, she caws again, softly. She stows her broom away behind the prompt desk and with a flurry of feathers, the black serge of her dress becomes wings and the Crow flies across the auditorium, through the open doors into the foyer and out into the night.
* * *
Twenty minutes to seven and all the dancers are in their dressing rooms, faces illuminated by picture frames of lightbulbs to stare into the depth of their pores, wondering how they will do it all over again and if their ankles, shoulders and hips will hold up for another three acts.
Luke is smoothing his hair with a little bit of gel and going over the orchard dance, trying not to hum the melody too loudly.
Greg is carefully taping his knees – King tonight, again, because he can’t do any other part any more – and next to him Josh is smearing thick black make-up over his face, neck and chest.
In the women’s dressing room, Stephanie is sewing a ribbon on to a pointe shoe and listening to her affirmations.
Zuleika is texting her brother. Mara is scrolling through the news on her phone, reading aloud an article about two celebrity actors getting a divorce to the interested parties of the dressing room.