Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #49
‘So, have you decided to join us?’
Lara thinks of everything she’s seen today: the spots on the mirror in the guest cabin; the Grit rising above the mausoleums through the mist; the dancers sprawled on the stage before class; the weight of the spanner in her hand; the melody of the Pearl waltz; the star at the centre of the pink-fleshed apple on the act three backdrop; the Crow veering away from the Pearl at the last moment; the warm, animal smell of Zach’s hair as they were pressed together in the confines of the lighting box; the sound of the yews dripping through the ghosts that watched them push the flight cases between the graves.
The woman in the goose-feather cape smiles sadly at her.
‘Yes.’ She swallows, makes her voice clearer. ‘I have.’
‘Excellent.’ Belinda slides a piece of paper across the desk. ‘The pledge I need you to read and repeat back to me, but the contract you can take away with you. You have seven days to sign and return it to me with your details. Any questions?’
‘Does anyone ever break their pledge?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it usually grim?’
Belinda shrugs. ‘You had a better vantage point to watch the show than most. You saw our audience. Not the most powerful, not the most dangerous tonight, but creatures who do not belong to the world you joined us from this morning. The pledge – like so much else here – keeps us safe.’
Lara nods. ‘Thank you. I’d like to pledge please.’
‘Good.’ Belinda turns to Mackie and raises her eyebrows.
‘I trust, Mackenzie, that you do not need me to provide you with the words to read?’
Mackie shakes his head, plants his feet wide apart and clasps his hands behind his back.
‘I, Mackenzie Boswell, so named by my father Harrison Boswell, do pledge my heart and body to The Apple and the Pearl as technical director, to hold the hearts of the crew in my hands, to watch over every part of the Grit behind and including the curtain, to care for the scene and the set including the Pearl when nesting in the Grit, for a year and a day.’
Belinda sits with her head a little cocked, staring at the blank wall above the cartoon-like treasure chest next to her desk, apparently listening for something. Then she starts and nods curtly.
‘All fine, thank you.’ She looks at Lara. ‘Your turn.’
‘I, Lara Pearson, so named by my mother Edith Pearson, do pledge my heart and body to The Apple and the Pearl as—’
She pauses, looks at the paper in her hands.
‘Lighting assistant, to care for the equipment given to the Grit, to light the above show as I am instructed, to aid in the care for the set and scenery, for a year and a day.’
This time, Belinda doesn’t stare off into the distance.
She nods, takes the bunch of keys from her desk and swivels around on her chair to one of the thick, iron-bound chests that sit behind her.
There is a clinking noise, and when Belinda faces them again she holds two tiny crystal vials in one hand and two long needles in the other.
She nods to Mackie as she wipes one of the needles with an antibacterial wipe, and he holds out his index finger.
She pricks it, squeezes a bead of crimson blood out of it and holds the vial labelled Technical Director underneath to collect it.
She plugs the vial with a cork, leaves it on the desk and gestures to Lara as she wipes down the next needle.
Of course, Lara thinks as she holds out her finger for the prick. What part of you thought you weren’t going to have to sign in blood?
Belinda stands up, brushes her trousers down and gestures to the door.
‘Thank you, all complete.’
Mackie beckons to Lara, holding the door open for her.
‘You’re one of us now,’ he says, and although he means it as a joke, his voice has a severe edge to it.
‘The cargo carriages aren’t packed yet and the rest of them’re no doubt ballsing it right up without me.
We’ll sort that out, then it’s dinner time. No fun until the work is done.’
* * *
When they’re gone and she’s finally alone, Belinda sits down heavily in her chair.
There is still the pile of offerings to be catalogued and stored, then she has to get the Pearl from Mackie and take it to the engine, and then get back here to her office to hear and count the tolls of the bell.
Only then will she be able to go to Gino and get the plate he’ll have saved for her.
You eat last, says the phantom voice of Percy Montgomery, the old company manager, in her ear.
Don’t even think of relaxing until after the midnight bells and the Grub is on the move again.
We’re the first and last link, the Crow’s right-hand man.
We are responsible for them all and you must never forget it.
She remembers the week she spent with Percy, shadowing him as they moved from forest to moor and back again, walking all over the Grit and the Grub, him talking at her without pausing for breath. I know everyone else gets a day to find their feet, he told her, but your job is more complicated.
He showed her the ledger and the chest and the bank records and the engine carriage and the bell.
They sat in the caboose and leaned over the railings and waited for the Crow, came back the next day and the next until the creature showed up, all black wings and sparking eyes and a voice like a scream in the distance and teeth stained with dark, old blood.
Putting on a show just to mess with her.
The next time she saw it, the creature was just a large black bird with a twinkle of mischief in its yellow eye.
They watched the beings in the audience every night and Percy Montgomery put his curiosity about Belinda’s lack of curiosity in a pocket to look at later.
And all the while, he talked. Snippets of gossip, nuggets of wisdom, old tales she’s never forgotten.
Recruitment will be far and away the hardest bit. Always has been. It won’t be the best dancers and musicians who see your job adverts, only the ones with something missing. A cast and crew of misfits and mavericks, that’s what this place is.
And afterwards? Do they just go back into the world after all they’ve seen here? In those days Belinda found that hard to believe.
Oh yes. I have a PO box in Birmingham that gets filled with Christmas cards from ex-musicians and dancers of The Apple and the Pearl every December.
And those that end up in Fae?
He sighed. They represent our failures. Sheep lost to the wolves. The Crow relies on you to make sure that doesn’t happen.
And so, at the end of that week, as Percy Montgomery stood on the platform at Liverpool Lime Street station at dawn and waved at the cast and crew who were sorry to see him go, she stood here in this office and decided to make changes.
Barrels of salt. A blacksmith to repair the rusted hinges on the Grub’s carriage doors. A new curtain.
She learned it all from her mother, and her preparations each year for Belinda’s annual summer holiday with her father.
Each July she packed Belinda a suitcase with changes of clothes (please always be presentable and do me proud) books with reading and maths activities (we don’t want you forgetting everything you’ve learned this year at school, do we) a packet of salt (you never know) plenty of soap (it will annoy them if you’re smelly, please wash at least twice a day) and an iron padlock with a screwdriver (please install this on your door as soon as you arrive and do not forget to lock it each and every night).
Her mother would drive her to the country park after dinner, park the car and lead her along a bridle path to a thicket of gnarled hawthorn.
They’d wait, her carefully packed suitcase at her feet, watching for sunset.
At last she’d hear hoof-beats, first distant and then nearer and nearer and her mother’s face would set hard but implacably reasonable.
The first sight of her father was always a shock.
The glow of him, the way his horse danced and snorted in the twilight, that shifty twinkle in his violet eyes.
He would hand her mother a clinking bag which she would reach into, take a coin from and bite before accepting it with a tight smile.
She would kiss Belinda on the forehead, hoist her up onto her father’s horse and say, ‘The first of September, Linden, not a day later’.
Her mother never, ever used her father’s title or honorifics and these days Belinda understands that is part of how she corralled him.
A named thing is a tamed thing. Belinda never asked how she knew that.
But her mother died when she was twenty, and she never thought to ask the other questions that now itch at her each night.
Like how she kept her father – Earl Starmist, Prince of Vryders Heath, Duke of the Moorlands – half tethered to mortal time.
Like how she ensured that not a single Fae in the court, from the Queen to the lowliest scullery maid, treated her with anything less that polite respect.
Years ago, she began to suspect her mother only managed it because she was not entirely human herself, but she doesn’t dwell on the thought, for fear of what that makes her.
Percy Montgomery, in one of his retirement letters to her after he had worked it out: Advisable to keep your family situation under wraps, I think.
I know you’re the best for the job, and so does the Crow, but one little doubt is all it takes to foment a mutiny.