The Kingdom of Bones

SIX

It was a close-run thing but they were on the station concourse by twenty minutes to midnight, leaving just enough time to get their freight loaded into the goods van and their people into the sleeping cars. The railway’s theater man had opened up the goods-yard gates so that the carriages could draw in alongside the platform. The stage crew transferred the flats, properties, and costume hampers with maximum efficiency. The actors fussed and argued and took rather longer.

Whitlock traveled with four heavy cases, a steamer trunk, and a lapdog named Gussie. He was prepared to carry the lapdog, but Sayers had to organize the transfer of his employer’s luggage in the absence of the Silent Man. The actors hung out of the windows and watched.

As Whitlock exercised Gussie on the platform, the railway’s theater man caught up with him. He was a slight man with a mustache, a long brown overcoat, and a bowler hat. “Mister Whitlock?” he said. “Mister Edmund Whitlock?”

“Here,” Whitlock said with his usual conscious grandeur.

“Cooper, sir. Theatrical representative for the Midland Railway. I’m sorry about your missing people, sir, but I can’t hold the train any longer.”

With one hand, Whitlock scooped up Gussie from the platform; the other he held up for silence.

“Don’t say another word, Mister Cooper,” he said. “There is only so much spare capacity in any man’s head, and I reserve all of mine for the classics.”

With that, he swept himself and his dog onto the train leaving Cooper for someone else to deal with. If he thought that Sayers would step into his place, he was wrong. Sayers had already tried his best with the theater man, and at that moment was elsewhere in the station.

Sayers had spotted someone across the platforms. Could it be? It surely was. Leaving the train and the company, he dashed to the iron bridge that crossed the tracks. It took him up close to the roof beams where all the steam and the smoke drifted. “Bram!” he started calling out even before he was safely within earshot. “Bram Stoker!”

The big Irishman on Platform Five turned at the sound of his name. He’d been easy to identify, even at night and at a distance. A man in his early forties, well over six feet tall and solidly built, he was brown-haired and auburn-bearded. He waited with a look of polite uncertainty as Sayers descended to the platform and crossed toward him.

“Forgive me, Bram,” Sayers said, getting his breath under control as he reached his opposite number. In the same way that Sayers was Whitlock’s man, Stoker was Henry Irving’s. Sayers might be hooked up with a modest little touring dog-and-pony show and Stoker with the mighty Lyceum company, but they surely were brothers under the skin.

Or perhaps not. Sayers saw the searching look in the Irishman’s eyes as Stoker gave him a moment of study.

“You do not know me,” Sayers said.

Stoker took one moment longer and then said, “You’re Tom Sayers. The prizefighter. You wrote and played in…”

“A Fight to the Finish.”

“You took out the number one touring company in ’eighty-three.”

“I serve as acting manager for Edmund Whitlock now.”

“As penance for what?” Stoker said wryly.

“I beg a favor, Bram,” Sayers said, without rising to the implied slight on his employer. “My company’s three short, and I don’t know where they are. Have you any influence with the railway’s theater man?”

“To hold back your train?”

“By any amount of time at all.”

Stoker checked his watch against the station clock and promised to see what could be done. As they crossed the iron bridge, he told Sayers that he was on his way to Scotland to join the rest of the Lyceum people in researching settings for a new production of Macbeth. He had broken his journey here to discuss arrangements for the provincial tour of Faust that was to precede it.

Researching settings! Sayers marveled at the very thought. Sets for The Purple Diamond had been picked up cheaply from the Theatre Royal at Bilston, whose scene dock was filled with the props and scenery of companies that had gone bust there.

Whitlock might not be the easiest of managers. He might not play the best houses, or be received by royalty, or be honored by any major institution. But he led a working company in an uncertain field of endeavor. He kept his dates and gave a living to others. Stoker might have the good fortune to be working for an actor at the very top of his profession. But it was thanks to Edmund Whitlock, and the hundreds like him, that the profession existed at all; and had he not been in such pressing need, Sayers would probably have stopped to argue the case.

While Stoker sought out Cooper, Sayers boarded the waiting train. He had to stride over bags and a birdcage in the corridor. As he was making his way down toward Whitlock’s compartment, Louise stepped out to intercept him.

“Tom,” she said. “Where is Mister Caspar?”

“Nobody knows,” Sayers said, perhaps a little tersely.

“Could he have come to any harm?”

“Him? I don’t imagine so.”

“Something like this has happened before, has it not?”

It had, in Sunderland, and in Sayers’ opinion Caspar should have been dismissed for his offense there and then.

But he said, “I really don’t think it’s right for us to be discussing this. Will you please excuse me, Miss Porter?”

She withdrew into her compartment—the one that should have been his own, and that he had given up for her—and he tapped on Whitlock’s door.

“Who is it?”

“Tom Sayers, sir.”

There was a pause and then, after a moment, he heard the door being unlocked. When Whitlock let him in, he saw that all the blinds had been drawn and the cashbox was open. Sayers was the company’s bookkeeper, but Whitlock always liked to count the take for himself.

He closed the compartment door behind Sayers and secured it again, and then said, “Well?”

“Bram Stoker’s on the station,” Sayers told him. “He’ll speak to the railway company for us. I think they’ll hold the train awhile longer.”

“So you’re telling me that Henry Irving’s man carries more influence than Edmund Whitlock’s?”

Sayers had no ready or diplomatic reply, but then realized that Whitlock was only making sport with him. Vain Whitlock might be. Stupid he was not.

“Sir,” Sayers said. “May I speak openly?”

Whitlock sat. Without the hair black that he wore onstage, his own hair was a fine shade of silver. His eyes were dark and his features were strong. His back was always straight…but that could have been due to the corset, which he seemed to imagine that no one was aware of.

He said, “Is it about Caspar?”

“I’ve held my peace for long enough,” Sayers said. “James Caspar is a growing problem for all of us. I think it neither wise nor desirable that we continue to put the company’s existence at risk for the appetites of one performer. We are men of the world, Edmund. If he wants to go whoring, that’s his concern. But now the women are starting to notice.”

Whitlock considered. He seemed unusually drained and weary-looking tonight. Looking down on him, Sayers began to wonder for the first time whether there could be substance to some of the backstage whispers. That there might be more to the actor-manager’s lapses than an overfamiliarity with the play.

“By the women, do you mean sweet little Louise?” Whitlock said. “An undisclosed affection there, wouldn’t you say?”

“What do you mean?”

“For Caspar.”

For Caspar? Sayers could not envision a less suitable attachment. Yet he could imagine how a man like Caspar might appear to one so young and impressionable. He felt a dismay that he took care not to show.

He said, “All the more reason to bring it to an end.”

“We need him.”

“Not so. I can send a wire in the morning and have a replacement letter-perfect by Friday night.”

“No, Tom.”

“Why not?”

“Please do not ask me to explain.”

Sayers was about to reply, but at that moment there was some commotion outside in the corridor. Whitlock turned to stow the cashbox, and Sayers let himself out.

The members of the company had emerged from their compartments and were standing at the open windows on the platform side. Ricks and the Low Comedian and most of the stage crew were whistling and cheering. A couple of people moved to make space for Sayers so that he could look out with the rest of them.

Emerging from a cloud of steam at the far end of the platform were three strange shapes in lurching silhouette: a great winged figure like a flying Mephistopheles, buttressed on either side by supporting gargoyles, all three staggering this way and that as if the earth shook beneath them. Then the steam cleared and detail emerged; it was Caspar, arms outstretched for support, coat flapping wide, with the Silent Man and the Mute Woman attempting to steer him toward the train while his legs pursued some erratic agenda of their own. The company cheered them on, and the Low Comedian opened a door to receive them.

“Stop the noise!” Sayers shouted. “Please! Consider our reputation!”

The Silent Man and his wife got Caspar to the train. Ricks and the Low Comedian reached out and hauled him in by his clothing. Sayers’ warning had come too late; they’d drawn the attention of strangers from other carriages. Railwaymen had stopped to watch from the bridge and one or two later travelers had emerged from the station’s waiting rooms, drawn by the disturbance.

Landing in the train, Caspar bounced off the paneling and almost fell back out again. But the Silent Man and his wife were now blocking the way. A guard’s whistle sounded outside on the platform and the door was slammed from without.

As the train began to move. Sayers spied Bram Stoker standing with the railway’s theater man. It was ten minutes after the hour. Sayers raised his hand in a wave of thanks as they went by, and saw it returned.

Then he closed the window and turned to deal with James Caspar.

Most of the others had returned to their berths. Caspar was clinging to a handrail while his silent companions were trying to detach him and get him into his own compartment. Sayers moved down the corridor toward them with mounting anger.

But before he could reach the dissipated Juvenile, Louise stepped out ahead of him. Her back was turned and she did not see Sayers at all. Her attention was directed toward the young man who was now somehow managing to find his feet despite the motion of the train.

“Mister Caspar!” she said. “Are you unwell?”

She spoke without irony and with genuine concern. Caspar drew himself up to his full height, and then threw off the hands that would support him. He raised a finger, as if he’d just been struck by a brilliant idea that he was about to express.

But then, instead of coming out with it, he looked and saw the open compartment door. He went toward it like a falling oak. As he disappeared from sight, the door was slid from within and the blinds pulled with a speed that seemed impossible.

Louise moved to the closed door, head bent and listening, hand raised to knock.

“Mister Caspar?” she said. A sound came from the other side of the door; more than coughing, not quite vomiting. The Silent Man and his wife exchanged a glance and started to back away.

Louise turned to Sayers as he reached her.

“I don’t know what to do for him,” she said helplessly.

Sayers said, “Come away, Louise. Please.”

From inside the compartment, Caspar’s audible exertions grew more major.

“But what if he needs a doctor?” Louise said.

“I do think that’s unlikely.”

Something caught her eye as she glanced down. Sayers looked and saw something pooling under the door. It was a widening fan of red. It was thick and moving slowly.

Sayers hardly knew what to say.

But he did not need to say a thing for Louise’s eyes turned upward in her head and she fell against him in a dead faint. She turned as she fell, and her feet kicked up into the air; before he knew it, he was holding her in both arms as if to carry her to safety.

He was too shocked to move. Her body was utterly relaxed and pressed against his, almost the full length of it; her weight in his arms, her head against his shoulder, the warm scent of her hair up close to his face. It was like the first time he had danced with a woman, only more so; the same overwhelming sense of forbidden physical contact, the same heady feeling of time slowing down. And the fact that his first dance had been with one of his aunts left him totally unprepared for this.

“Bring her in here!” Whitlock’s voice rang down the corridor. Sayers looked over his shoulder and saw the boss in the doorway to his own compartment, beckoning. He turned around with extra care, swaying with the motion of the train. One of Louise’s shoes dropped, and he had to leave it where it fell. Moving sideways, holding tight to the weight and warmth of her, he shuffled along.

“Mrs. Wrigglesworth!” Whitlock called again, and as Sayers carried Louise into the compartment the sewing woman appeared behind him.

“Fetch smelling salts,” Whitlock said to her, and she quickly vanished again.

Gussie was removed to his basket and Miss Porter was lowered onto the seat. The sewing woman patted Louise’s hand while Whitlock waved the bottle of ammonia salts under her nose. Sayers stood back, feeling awkward and embarrassed but not as unhappy as he might. The sense of Louise so entirely in his arms would take a long time to fade.

“Easy, child,” Whitlock said as the ammonia brought her to her senses with a start. “All is well.”

Louise blinked dazedly. Whitlock moved back as she pushed herself to sit upright. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“Young Mister Caspar has rather disgraced himself.”

“Is he not dying?”

“By morning, I’ve no doubt he’ll think it preferable to the head that he’ll have.”

“What about the blood?”

“Blood?”

“Under the door.”

“Ah. Sayers?” Whitlock looked up at his acting manager.

“Cheap red wine and ruby port,” Sayers suggested tersely. He was in no mood to offer excuses for Caspar. Let Louise see the man as he really was.

Whitlock said, “Let us pursue this indelicate line no further. I have to ask for your understanding.” He looked around to include Tom Sayers and the sewing woman. “All of you,” he said. “This is not something of which I often speak. I knew Caspar’s father. I’ll go into no details, but they had been separated for some time. Caspar was a wild child and all but a lost soul then. His father had taken on the work of reclaiming him for God, but died with it barely begun. I swore to him that I would continue the work until its end. I pledged my own soul to the task.” At this point, he looked pointedly at Sayers. “Do not judge Caspar too harshly,” he said. “One day you will see the good in him, as I do. There has been much to overcome. There is yet some distance to go.”

“That is a very noble story, Mister Whitlock,” Louise said, and Sayers felt his heart sink a little.

Whitlock acknowledged her compliment with a slight and graceful nod. Sayers, tight-faced, was disinclined to believe a single word of it. He knew Whitlock’s technique too well, and was least persuaded when the old tragedian seemed at his most sincere. But he said nothing.

A few minutes later, Louise was well enough to return to her own berth. Sayers would have stayed to present his argument to Whitlock, but a warning look told him that Whitlock would not have it. At least not here, and not now.

Sayers stepped out of Whitlock’s compartment and closed the door behind him. It was, perhaps, inevitable that Louise would believe only the best of someone. Had Caspar been a worthier man, Sayers’ gloom would have been more profound; as it was, he had to have faith that she would see the wastrel’s true nature before too long, and reach the appropriate conclusion. By much the same token, Sayers hoped to have his own qualities understood.

A woman would choose the steadfast man in the end. It was always so upon the stage.

The corridor was empty now. The sewing woman had retrieved Louise’s fallen shoe. Everyone else in the company had retired.

Except for one figure, down at the far end.

The Mute Woman was there on her hands and knees outside Caspar’s compartment. She had several rags and a bucket of water, and she was cleaning up the stain from the floor.

She looked up, and her eyes met Sayers’ own. Her expression did not change. She swayed a little with the movement of the train. Her face remained blank.

And as Sayers turned to make his way to the berth that he was to share with the Low Comedian, the Mute Woman lowered her head and carried on with her task.