Charlotte Betts

 

IT ISN’T OVER ‘TIL THE BEARDED LADY SINGS

Prague, 1902

 

The wintry sun was shining, the band playing and the crowd waving as we marched through the cobbled streets towards the castle. It was only by chance that I glimpsed the man in the crowd suddenly lift his arm and hurl the missile. At the instant it smashed into Bella’s cheek my startled gaze met his. Arm still raised, his eyes mirrored the shock in my own. He turned in a flash of blue and disappeared into the excited throng.

Bella gasped as the rotten egg exploded in a splatter of noxious liquid and struggled to maintain her tip-toe balance on the palomino pony’s back. I stretched up and snatched hold of her silk-stockinged ankle until she was steady. Hardly faltering, she flashed me a grateful smile and continued her bareback pirouettes. Less professional myself, I dropped the balls I’d been juggling and had to hastily improvise a cartwheel, to the amusement of the populace. Being Zeno the Clown allows you some latitude for mistakes; being a dwarf grants you a license to get away with professional murder.

Alongside Bella, swaggering at the head of the circus procession was Cousin Raphaelo. Resplendent in ringmaster’s red coat and top hat, he twirled his whip and his moustaches. Oblivious to Bella’s distress, he saw only the cheering crowd as Bordelloni’s Circus parade marched over Charles Bridge and into the centre of Prague, the jewel of Central Bohemia.

The following morning, bustling about in the dawn chill, the canvas crew were setting up the big top in the parkland below the castle. The elephant trumpeted as she strained to hoist the central tent pole into position and I raised my hand in greeting to Najib perched up high on her shoulders. Sun glinted on the frosted spires within the castle walls up on the hill and I breathed a sigh of contentment. It was good to be back. The fire was already lit in the cooktent and I joined Uncle Guido and Bella for coffee.

“A whole month in Prague!” she said. “I can’t wait to go to the Opera again. And Zeno, don’t forget you promised me another puppet show!”

I, too, was glad we’d reached our winter quarters. The circus life is a hard one. Endlessly travelling, we arrive in town late in the day, sleeping all too briefly before early morning set up. It’s hard physical work; cleaning out the animals, setting up the trapeze rigging, seating and ticket booths. Sites must be booked in advance, children schooled, acts endlessly practiced, and all to be fitted around two performances a day. Then the whole process starts again, day in, day out for eleven months a year.

“Raphaelo’s sleeping late again,” grumbled Uncle Guido. “Plenty to do before the public arrives.”  

“Talk of the devil,” muttered Bella.

Raphaelo sauntered over, tying the belt of his silk dressing gown and yawning hugely. “Get me a coffee, there’s a good girl,” he said to Bella, patting her pert little posterior as he took her place on the bench.

“Mind your manners, Raphaelo Bordelloni,” she said.

I clenched my teeth. Dwarves like Uncle Guido and me aren’t meant to have feelings. But this one did; especially when his handsome and very tall cousin took liberties with the prettiest, sweetest girl in the circus.

Grigor arrived with the breakfast bread. As fearless as the lions he trains and as tall as my cousin, Grigor is as different as possible from him in character. Perhaps that has something to do with why he is my closest friend.

“Have you recovered from your eggsperience, Bella?” he asked.

“Very amusing, Grigor. There are egg stains all over my tutu and the smell of sulphur is following me around like the breath of Hades. And there’s a huge bruise on my ankle where Zeno grabbed me.” She smiled at me. “You don’t know your own strength, Zeno.”

A small quiver ran through my groin at the memory of actually touching her silk-clad ankle and I regretted that I’d been too preoccupied at the time to enjoy it.

“I saw who threw the egg,” I said. “And it wasn’t meant for you.”

“What?”

“He looked so shocked when it hit you. In any case, we know him. D’you remember when we were here last winter, you and Raphaelo became friendly with one of the locals and his sister? What was his name, Franz?” As if I had really forgotten. You don’t forget the name of the man who looks as if he’s about to carry off the girl you’re hopelessly in love with.

Bella’s eyes opened wide. “Franz would never hurt me! Although I wouldn’t leave the circus for him, we parted on good terms. In spite of the way Raphaelo pursued his sister.”

“Still, he threw the egg. Maybe it was meant for Raphaelo?”

“Must look up little Theresa again,” smirked Raphaelo. “Didn’t take long for her to succumb to my very obvious charms. After some firm persuasion.” He smoothed his moustache and stood up. “About time you lot got a shift on if we’re going to be ready for my public.”

Uncle Guido, a look of disgust on his broad face, walked off as fast as his stumpy little legs would allow.

 

 

The next day there were whispers amongst the troupe that Raphaelo had received a death threat.

“Pinned to the door of his caravan with a knife,” said Ottilie, one half of the Siamese twins.

“…with a knife,” repeated her sister Odette.

“Mind you, I’m not surprised. The way he carries on, drinking and gambling and taking other men’s women.”

“…other men’s women.”

“Perhaps it was Stanislaus? Raphaelo stole Stanislaus’s woman, didn’t he?” sang the bearded lady. She never spoke, only sang.

Stanislaus, the knife thrower, had indeed found his contortionist girlfriend in Raphaelo’s caravan a few weeks previously, resulting in a nasty brawl. However, once she’d packed her bags and left an uneasy truce had ensued between the two men. In such a close-knit community you couldn’t afford to bear grudges. Well, that was the theory anyway.

The Chinese acrobats were warming up in the big top, pigtails whipping about their heads as they somersaulted in quick-fire succession over a bamboo pole. The bearded lady was practicing scales; her act culminated in the shattering of glass purely by the strength of her vocal chords. As I climbed the rope ladder to start work on the trapeze, I watched Bella toeing along the high wire above, parasol in one hand as she balanced. Suddenly I heard shouts and a cacophony of barking. Somersaulting down from the ropes, I ran outside. Smoke poured from Raphaelo’s caravan.

 “Where’s Raphaelo?” screamed Ottilie.

“…Raphaelo?” echoed Odette.

Cursing, I shouted at the others to fetch water, then flung open the caravan door. Black smoke filled the interior. A snoring Raphaelo was lying on his bed and I dragged him outside, not being too careful how I handled him. Unhurt, if a bit black around the edges, he coughed in his drunken slumber.

Later, I said to Uncle Guido. “It was some rags burning in a beer flagon and there was a smell of kerosene in the caravan. That fire was deliberately started.”

 “Perhaps it was the same person who sent the death threat?” said Guido, head in his hands. “Oh Zeno, What did I do to deserve such a son; a womanising drunk who’ll bring disgrace on us all?”

I gripped his shoulder with my stubby fingers. “He’ll settle down in time.” I didn’t believe it, though.

“He’s old enough now to have ambitions for Bordelloni’s circus. Instead he leaves you and me to manage everything and fritters away the profits on gambling and drink. The circus is in financial trouble and the troupe is beginning to lose confidence. You know Louis is taking his performing seals and going to work in a music hall? And why? Because Raphaelo got his timing wrong on the introduction and the whole act was a shambles. Again. Slapdash and unprofessional. The circus won’t survive if we lose any more acts in the coming season because of Raphaelo.”

 

 

The screams that awoke the camp in the middle of the night reverberated in our dreams long after the lions had been dragged off the body and Grigor had whipped them back into their travelling cage. In the big cats’ pen I supported him as he spewed up his dinner onto the bloodstained ground.

“It could have been me the lions ripped to pieces,” he said, teeth chattering.

Still shaking with shock myself, I waited for him to wipe his mouth. Leaning against the fence, I distractedly picked at a scrap of cloth caught on the gate, while I tried not to look at the broken body. Raphaelo didn’t look so handsome now. Not with one arm ripped off, his head crushed to a red pulp and his guts spilling onto the sawdust from a gaping hole in his stomach.

The animals were disturbed, which didn’t bode well for the coming afternoon’s performance. The elephant, chains clanking, was swaying from side to side like a metronome and Fifi’s performing poodles howled like apprentice wolves. The lions snarled and paced sullenly while their kill, now covered in a blanket, lay out of reach but close enough to scent. We could all smell the metallic taint of blood, mixed with absinthe fumes emanating from the body. I hoped that Raphaelo had been sufficiently drunk to dull the pain.

Huddling together in the frosty dawn, our breath clouded the air while we all discussed what to do next.

“We’ll have to call the authorities.”

“Pshaw! The authorities; what do they know? Besides, it’s circus business.”

“It’ll only cause unnecessary trouble. It was just a terrible accident,” muttered Uncle Guido in broken tones.

“And there’ll be another one if you don’t stop that Stanislaus,” I said as a dagger whistled past my ear.

“You and whose army, little man? I still have to practice; no matter what else goes on!” protested Stanislaus.

“What I want to know is what happens to all of us now? The circus, I mean. Without Raphaelo in charge.”

“Raphaelo was never in charge,” said Guido, “even if he held the purse strings and acted as front man. You know Zeno and I manage all the circus business.”

“But who is going to be ringmaster today? We can’t have a performance without a ringmaster. And it’s the final show before the winter break.”

Naturally, no one considered cancelling the performance.

“Grigor,” I said. “Grigor can do it. He’ll fit the red coat and he has the presence.”

“I can’t step in as ringmaster and do the big cats act,” protested Grigor. “In any case, I’m not sure if it’ll be safe to work with the lions so soon after they’ve had the taste of fresh blood.” His face was still deathly pale.

There was silence while we all thought what to do. “Zeno must do it,” said Uncle Guido.

My face burned at the ensuing laughter: damn it, why should size matter so much?  “Perhaps I could do it,” I said in as strong a voice as I could muster. I had their attention. “As a novelty act.” I held my head high. “After all, I am a Bordelloni. I could ride around the ring backwards on the camel, wearing the ringmaster’s jacket. It’s much too long for me so that should be good for a laugh. And then Grigor can chase after me at the end of the lion act before snatching the top hat off me and resuming his role as ringmaster.”

“It could work,” sang the bearded lady.

“Can any one think of a better plan?” asked Guido. “No?” He wiped away his tearstains with the back of his hand. “Then it’s time to bury my son.”

 

 

It did work. The audience loved it but it was a bitter-sweet pill for me to swallow, wearing the red coat as a comedy act, when it was only because of a quirk of nature that it wasn’t mine anyway.

It was ironical that, the son of a tall man, I’d been born a dwarf and that tall, handsome Rafaelo was the son of a dwarf. Guido, my father’s older brother, is more of a father to me than mine could ever have been. Of course, he understands the tribulations of being a dwarf without us ever having to discuss it. After Mother died there was no one but Guido to save me from my father’s disgust. And when Father died of an apoplexy it wasn’t entirely unexpected that he left his ringmaster’s whip, along with the major financial share of the circus to Rafaelo, rather than to me. It was simply history repeating itself. Poor Guido.

After the final performance Grigor and I walked over Charles Bridge intending to revisit U Fleku; a particularly fine hostelry that has been brewing its own ale since mediaeval times. We stopped and leaned over the stone balustrading, the swollen Vltava River swirling below us, ice crusting at the edges.

“Something has been puzzling me,” said Grigor. “The lion pen. The gate was locked.”

“I don’t understand.” My heart began to beat fast with foreboding.

“Locked from the outside. I was first to reach the pen. When I heard the screaming I knew someone was in bad trouble and snatched up the whip. I came tumbling out of my caravan in time to see Simba toss Raphaelo’s arm in the air and Samba slashing into his stomach. Guido was outside the pen crying for help and I had to push him out of the way.” He shuddered.” Thank God you came to help me, Zeno. The lions were out of control with blood lust and if you hadn’t clubbed them like that I’d have been dead meat, too. But it wasn’t until later, reliving the whole horrible scene that I remembered that I’d had to unlock the gate to get in.”

“But…that means,” I swallowed, “someone locked Raphaelo inside.”

“And then went and opened the cages to let the lions through the tunnel into the pen. Exactly! And that would be murder. But who would have done such an unspeakable thing?”

My stomach lurched again. “Any number of people. Raphaelo made a career of upsetting everyone around him.”

“Like his mother before him. Guido never really got over the way she ran off with the Lizard man from Zambezi.

“There was something…” I felt around in my coat pocket and then produced the scrap of blue cloth. “I found this on the gate. Someone must have caught their clothes on the wire. But I don’t recognise it, do you?” Bright blue with a small black check. Something stirred in my memory but I couldn’t pin it down.

Grigor turned the fabric between his fingers. “Doesn’t belong to one of us. No one has secrets around here; I can even tell you what colour bloomers the bearded lady wears.” He dropped the fabric into my hand and shrugged. “It’s been a hard day and I’m going to follow an old Russian custom. After we’ve finished our beer I’m going to buy several bottles of vodka to take back to my caravan and I’m going to get disgustingly drunk. Care to join me?”

As it turned out, I avoided the hangover that tormented Grigor the following day because when we returned Bella came running towards us, a bundle in her arms.

“Look, Zeno! The sweetest little baby! I found it on the steps of my caravan. Someone must have abandoned it. How could they? It’s got the tiniest hands…” Her face was flushed rosy with excitement.

I groaned.

“I’m off,” said Grigor, bottles clanking in his coat pockets. “And you’d better drop that little package into the nearest orphanage, Bella.”

“Typical male!” said Bella, stamping her pretty foot and making the infant cry.

Giving an inward sigh I set out to prove I’m not a typical male. Gingerly, I took it from her. “It’ll need feeding; we’d better see if we can borrow a bottle.” I smothered an expression of disgust. “And it needs changing.”

Bella insisted on looking after the baby, at least for a while, in case the mother came back for it. I refrained from saying that no one in their right mind would want to be ruled by this tiny tyrant with a roar louder than an elephant. I made an orange-box cradle and was rewarded with Bella’s smile.

 

 

I was concerned about Uncle Guido. Considering that he and Raphaelo had never really got on, Guido was grieving hard. Usually cheerful, he had sunk into such a deep depression that he lay in our caravan with his face turned to the wall, barely speaking.

“You must eat,” I said.

He pushed away the soup I offered. “I can’t forget his screams as the lions tore him apart.” His face crumpled again. “Oh, Zeno, I was so proud of him when he was little. So tall and fine-looking. So unlike me.”

I was silent; I knew what he meant. But Beauty is as Beauty does. “I don’t want to make things worse, Uncle Guido but something is bothering me. I think…it’s possible that Raphaelo’s death wasn’t an accident.”

Guido sat up suddenly and looked at me. “Of course it was an accident.”

I shook my head. “Grigor said the gate to the lions’ pen was locked behind Raphaelo. You can’t do that from the inside.

“I don’t want to hear this!” shouted Guido. “What kind of a sick mind have you got? No one in the troupe would do such a thing. No one, d’you hear me? It could only be  an outsider.” He grabbed hold of my collar and pushed his face into mine. “Like it or not, I’m the head of the Bordelloni family now and I forbid you to talk of this again!” He released me and turned his face back to the wall.

 

 

A day or two later I was coaching some of the children in a seven person, ten chair, leaning pyramid when I saw someone skulking around Bella’s caravan. Standing on a platform I lifted the final urchin up like a cherry on the top of the cake, keeping half an eye on what was going on. Fair hair, stocky, blue jacket: there was something familiar about the man. Suddenly I remembered.

Carefully I let go of the teetering tower of children. “Keep practicing!” I said, somersaulting off the platform. The man entered Bella’s caravan but by the time I reached it he was coming down the steps, a bundle in his arms. He saw me and ran.

“Grigor!” I shouted. Legs and arms pummelling, I sprinted after the man towards the park gates and then along crowded streets, feet slipping on the frozen cobbles. Twisting and turning through the lanes, we reached the castle steps, rising steeply above us. Close behind, Grigor, lion whip in hand, was making valiant efforts to catch up. Ahead, the man continued to race on upwards. An old woman went flying as he cannoned into her and I had to dodge a hail of onions and turnips as her shopping bounced down the steps.

Grigor was thundering along beside me as we reached the top and, breath rasping in our chests, we chased our quarry through several echoing castle courtyards. Suddenly he disappeared. I put my hands on my knees and hung forward while I recovered my breath. Not for the first time, I cursed my short legs.

“We’ve lost him!”

“I think I know where he lives,” I panted. “I came here last year with Bella. He’s got the baby. Come on!”

I led Grigor through the streets, retracing my steps twice as I remembered the way, finally ducking into an alley no more than four feet wide. Minute higgledy-piggledy houses lined the lane, all backed up against the wall built between the Daliborka Tower and the White Tower. Once the mediaeval hangout of alchemists and goldsmiths, Golden Lane is now occupied by artisans, poets and merchants.

I pushed open the shop door of a crooked little house. Inside the gloomy interior the walls were hung with tapestries and icons for sale.

An elderly woman behind a desk looked up. “Yes?”

“Where’s Franz?”

“Franz?” Her eyes flickered to one of the tapestries and I saw it move a little. Grigor snapped it aside with his whip and revealed a half open door. The kitchen behind was empty and we clattered up the wooden stairs. A baby’s wail came from above and we arrived just in time to grab hold of Franz as he attempted to climb out of the window onto the adjacent roof. Grigor put a stop to that, taking the baby from him and thrusting the infant towards me.

“You’d better tell us all about it, Franz,” I said. He spat on the floor and wriggled in Grigor’s grip. “Let him go, Grigor. He’s not going to run away while you have that whip in your hand. Well, Franz?”

“Filthy circus folk!”

“You shouldn’t tar us all with the same brush, you know,” I said mildly.

We turned as the woman came up the stairs. She looked in horror at the baby in my arms.

“Perhaps I should give the child to her grandmother?”

Grigor looked at me in perplexity. “What’s going on Zeno?”

“Theresa’s child, is it, Franz?”

The woman snatched the baby to her bosom and crooned to it. Franz sank down onto a chair and put his head in his hands, shoulders heaving. “I couldn’t bear to have it near. In case it grew up to look like him. I thought Bella would look after it; she was always kind. But my mother made me fetch it back. My little sister…that bastard Raphaelo dishonoured my sister. He murdered her as surely as if he’d stuck a knife in her heart. So young, so innocent and disgraced all because he forced himself on her. And then she died in childbed. ” He sobbed again. “By the time we knew about her condition, the circus had gone or I’d have horsewhipped him and made him marry her.”

“So you murdered him?” said Grigor.

“No!” He shrugged. “I only wanted to frighten him a little.”

“I don’t call having him ripped limb from limb by lions is ‘only frightening him a little’.”

“What?” Either Franz was a brilliant actor or he was genuinely shocked. “The fire in the caravan was only to scare him; I stuffed some rags in a beer flagon so there’d be a lot of smoke but little fire. He could easily escape. Besides, I warned him.”

“The note?”

Franz nodded.

“Except that he was drunk and we had to pull him out,” I said. “So how do you explain what you were doing by the lions’ pen when Raphaelo died?”

“I was never there!”

“You know that’s a lie.” I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the scrap of fabric. Slowly he took it from me, his other hand unconsciously feeling for the neatly darned patch on his shoulder. “The same blue and black check,” I said. “You must have been in a hurry to escape after you locked him in with the lions.”

“I didn’t do it! I hated him for what he did to Theresa but I’d never murder him.” He shrugged. “Okay, I was there. I came back to see what kind of mess had been made of the caravan. And perhaps to smack him about a bit. But he wasn’t at home. I was burning with hatred for him and couldn’t sleep. I sniffed around the camp for a while, looking in through the caravan windows; I had an idea he might be forcing himself on some other poor girl. Then I heard a noise. At first I thought it was an animal. But it was Raphaelo, snoring and lying dead drunk on the floor inside the pen. I went and looked through the fence at him and then I heard someone coming. As I turned to run I caught my arm on the wire. Then, as I reached the edge of the park, I heard screaming. But I didn’t kill him; you have to believe me!”

I studied his face and felt a leaden weight settle on my shoulders. It was patently obvious to all that he was innocent.

“We’ll go then. And I’m sorry that my cousin caused your family such sadness. Tomorrow I’ll bring you some money for the child’s care.”

As we walked back to the circus, Grigor said, “He didn’t kill Raphaelo, did he? I’m sure he wasn’t guilty. So who did it?” He looked sick. “It must have been someone in the circus.”

I didn’t want to talk about it. “Who knows?”

“It’s frightening, suspecting there’s a murderer amongst us.”

I shrugged. “We must hurry back. I’m late for practice. Uncle Guido will be waiting for me on the ropes.”

A clown’s act may look slapdash but nothing could be further from the truth; it’s all to do with perfect timing. Especially when a large part of your performance takes place on the trapeze, whilst dressed in a baggy jacket with a flock of doves stuffed in your pockets. Uncle Guido had taught me everything he knew almost before I could walk and now we were well matched; two halves of a perfect whole that could only be achieved through years of training.

The big top was busy. I dusted my hands with French chalk, grimacing as the bearded lady tried without success to reach top C. A recent cold had left her with a sore throat and the pyramid of brimming wineglasses held aloft by one of the children stubbornly refused to shatter.

Flexing my fingers and stretching my hamstrings, I began to climb the ladder to the platform high up in the roof of the tent. Above me, Guido swung upside down on a trapeze. Bella, a vision in pink tulle, trotted around the ring below standing on her pony’s back, arms held out and the reigns between her teeth. Fifi’s French poodles yapped with nervous excitement as they jumped through hoops of fire.

“Where the hell have you been!” Guido shouted down to me. He always was hot on discipline.

I climbed up onto the platform as he jumped down beside me. “Finding out who set fire to Raphaelo’s caravan,” I said. “It was Franz. The abandoned baby turns out to have been fathered on his sister by Raphaelo. So Franz bears a heavy grudge against our family.”

Guido closed his eyes in pain for a second. “So he killed my son?”

I began to climb the rope towards the high trapezes. Guido followed me on a parallel rope. “You know he didn’t,” I said. I thought he faltered but we both reached the trapezes at the same time.

We began to swing our trapezes backwards and forwards; together and then apart like a slow dance.

“I saw you, that night,” I said, “going into Raphaelo’s caravan with a bottle of absinthe.” We swung apart again and I waited until he returned before I continued. “What did you do; pour yours into his glass when he wasn’t looking?”

Face set, Guido nodded as he swung away. “I waited until he passed out then dragged him into the lion’s pen and locked him in. Ready?”

I mirrored his actions as he flipped over backwards and hung upside down by his knees then swung back towards me, hands outstretched. I grasped him and he let go of his trapeze. The ground underneath swayed as our momentum carried us back. I released him and he twisted out into mid air and effortlessly caught the returning trapeze then swung back again.

“Zeno, the others will soon know it wasn’t Franz who killed Raphaelo. It’s already whispered that the gate was locked behind him. There’ll be fear and unrest amongst the troupe if the murderer isn’t found. There must be a known culprit or morale will fall even more. Then what will become of Bordelloni’s Great Circus?”

I knew what I had to do. Through a shimmer of tears I stared at Bella so far below.

 “I shouldn’t have done it,” I said. “It was a spur of the moment decision and I’ll hear his screams for as long as I live.” Which won’t be long, I thought as Guido swung away again.

“You were braver than me, Zeno. I meant to loose the lions but faltered at the necessary moment. But I guessed it was you who let them into the pen. You did it for the greater good. My beautiful Raphaelo was the rotten apple that would destroy us all.” He caught my hands again and I clung to his warm strength as he swayed beneath me.

“Uncle Guido, you have been everything to me.”

“And you have been a true son. But justice must be seen to be done. And there has to be a scapegoat.”

“I know,” I said, mentally preparing myself. Reluctantly, I let go of him and he launched himself into the air towards his trapeze. Timing is everything, I thought, taking a deep breath. My fingers loosened their grip on the trapeze bar ready to throw myself down to the hard, unforgiving ground below.

Then, Guido, who never missed a catch, at the split second his hands should have made contact with the bar, crossed his arms as if in prayer and fell like a stone.

Far below, the bearded lady finally achieved High C and the water glasses shattered at the precise moment Guido crashed to the ground. Tears pouring down my face, I unbuttoned my coat and loosed the doves, which flew in a white cloud up to the roof of the big top. After all, the show must go on.