Black Juice Read online

  And when she speaks, I cannot tell if it’s her or my own mind speaking. Her voice is ragged from the long night’s singing and smoke.

  ‘You don’t care greatly for me, do you, Berry?’

  ‘It is not my place to think of you any particular way, Mistress,’ I say, without turning to her.

  ‘I asked you a question; have the grace to answer it.’ The voice is soft and rough, and perhaps knows my answer already.

  Field and forest are utterly silent around us. It’s that moment when the birds pause between waking and heralding the dawn. The road leads us into thicker grey air, full of silty shapes that might become green, might become brown, with time, with light. I search my own grey heart for some truth. It’s a long search, while the horse idles along beside me, his great warm head at my shoulder.

  The mistress makes some patient movement with her arm, perhaps to push her loosening hair from her eyes. The expensive sound of sleeve against bodice enrages me anew. A dress such as my Gerdie would never dream to wear, the new dress, freshly boned and beaded and trimmed, in which Madam made her first grand entrance into the keep two nights ago, graciously acknowledging the gipsies’ yodels of admiration—now that rich dress is singed, and splashed with wine, and its lace-bands are torn off and given to some witch-woman back at the wagon. Hours of work, it will take, to bring it back from such a state, hours Mullord will go sleepless about his duties, hours the mistress will no doubt sleep away in her feather bed, aware of naught but her own comfort.

  I wait to speak, until I know my voice will not shake with anger. ‘Mullord sees something in you,’ I finally say, ‘beyond your beauty and beyond your rage at the world. If he sees it, I believe it must be there.’

  She gives a tiny, mirthless laugh. We round the bend beside the Seat. Up among the trees a horse greets the master with a whinny.

  ‘Continue, Berry.’

  ‘Mistress?’

  ‘My lord sees something in me, you say. But does Berry see?’ She’s not jesting; she’s asking me for a piece of myself, without telling me how she’ll use it; whether she’ll toss it away, and Berry with it, or hold it in her heart to fester and poison my life with.

  I stroke the bay’s head for comfort. There’s no care inside that great skull; nothing will ever come out of those tunnel nostrils, that soft-leather mouth, but grassy air.

  ‘Why, I see the rage, as we all do. And I see the beauty, for no one could miss that either.’ That prickle of lightning, which doesn’t know its own power.

  The tree-shadows muffle nothing—not my voice, not the mistress’s fine ears. ‘But the other thing—I cannot lie to you, Mistress. I do not see it.’

  We wait at the bottom of the path. The sun creaks a little higher at the edge of the world, and I can see the mistress’s face composed, raised to the scrubby hillside, her beauty no less for the absence of its usual colour, for the shadows exhaustion has painted around her eyes.

  ‘I will tell you, Berry,’ she says, her voice broken to a croak, ‘I cannot see that other thing either.’

  And in that moment I glimpse it, in that ruefulness, in that bearing. Danced to a rag and faced by only herself in the morning, still she is straight-backed and undiminished.

  She turns to me, and a comb from her head tinkles to the road. The hair falls sumptuous on her shoulders, unrolls down her back, pools in her lap. She meets my eye, her face white and cool.

  ‘So we must both trust my lord’s sight,’ she whispers, ‘and hold onto that trust, mustn’t we? ’Tis all either of us can do.’

  I bend to retrieve the comb. As I straighten, I find myself smiling. I have never looked her full in the face before.

  She does not smile back; I never expected that. There won’t ever, I don’t think, be smiles and kindnesses out of this Mullady. She regards me a moment longer with her shadowed eyes. Then she turns her head, and I turn mine, and we both are still, listening to the master and horses come down the hill.

  red nose day

  ‘HAVE YOU GOTTA DO THAT?’ It was my first time out with Jelly; I was used to quiet.

  But Jelly had class, and all the allergies that come with that. He hawked and gobbed in the corner one last time. ‘Yeah, or it chokes me. Whaddaya see?’

  ‘When I can concentrate … nothing yet.’

  In the circle of the sights, the wet banner sagged. Of Jeux des Bouffons, I could only read Jex Buffs, and the face beside it was folded across the middle, so it wasn’t even red-nosed.

  We were up high, in the nuns’ palace. No one had slept here since the old girls got torched for wowserism, so it was a good hide. And it gave this brilliant view of the Lyric. When I took my eyes from the sights, the banner was a faraway blob, the Stage Door light a white pinprick among the buildings; we had great distance. No one would ever spot us from down there. And we didn’t have to be anywhere near a real buffoon.

  The rain was only a spot here and there now, but this morning’s storms had given all the gargoyles black beards, and hung drops from every stone leaf and berry. Rain-filled potholes glinted along the streets. We were crouched inside, in a mist of our own breath, the draught chilling our eyeballs. The filthy window was cracked open just wide enough for the muzzle of the Fioreschiacciare.

  ‘She’s a beautiful weapon, all right.’

  Jelly cocked his head, clicked his tongue in agreement, and kept fumbling in his jacket pockets.

  I stroked the curved clips remaining in the canister, awed at myself, how far I’d come. A top-of-the-line Fiore. Famous for her precision work during the Lemonade Wars, she was matt black, with the slender, high-haunched build of all the weapons Benato designed for Fiore. And totally focused on the job—no engraving, no mirror-plating, no fussy walnut work. The only mark on her was the serial number stamped into her barrel.

  Jelly dragged out a pouch and papers. I snorted. ‘With your lungs.’

  ‘Always feel like a ciggy after a good cough. For the dragging feeling.’ He flattened a hand to his chest and pulled in a breath of must and fog, pretending to swoon. Then he began the serious slow business of rolling a smoke.

  I went back to the sights. The view was as crisp and coloured as a spring morning; the Fiore’s cross-whiskers reached back through my eye to focus my very brain-stem. She had everything but a pulse.

  ‘We don’t want to drop ’em right there on the step.’ I tried to sound businesslike instead of excited. ‘Or no one else’ll come out. We want to get ’em along the boulevard, or once they hit the park there.’

  Jelly manoeuvred his back up the wall and squinted out the window-crack. ‘Hmmm.’ He slid down into his squat again, clinked open a lighter and set the rollie going. His eyes were puffy and bruised like a gangmaster’s, and his fingers had tiny shakes. He didn’t make the auditions, this Jelly bloke, Dogleg had told me. But that’s all I know about him. ’Cept that now, his heart’s in the right place. You don’t need to worry about that. ‘Some of them’ll just hang out there, for a smoke or some Dutch courage. On the step. Gabbing.’

  ‘Yeah, like Red Enjin, and Harry the Lair, and the ones in a troupe, like the Bangers or the Russian guys—they hang about together.’

  ‘We could do them all, last off,’ said Jelly. ‘Send a rocket in. Blow our cover and be gone.’

  ‘Except how would we know it was last off? Say we take out the Bangers—maybe Otto and his Atlantics were about to pop out for a smoke. It’d be a sin to miss them.’

  Jelly sucked on the rollie. ‘When we feel satisfied.’ He tapped his chest. ‘That’s when we’re finished. When we’ve made a dent in the program. When there’s enough gone to give us a warm fuzzy feeling.’

  ‘If you say.’ I didn’t often get those, myself. I got colder with every hit. Colder and more steely.

  Right on twelve hundred, a little flock of bouffons burst from the door, pulling out puffers and pill-bottles and chequered handkerchees. I startled—they were suddenly so close, I could see the sweat beading through their pancake.
r />   ‘They’re all in a clump, but moving,’ I said. ‘There’s Dugald, and Tiny Robins, and a few amateurs—do we want amateurs?’

  ‘Why not? Hobbies are the pros of the future.’ Jelly scratched his scalp energetically. Psoriasis lurked along the hairline, ready to run out and pink-and-white his face any second.

  ‘Well, they’re still all togeth—Hang on, they’re splitting. Tiny’s off by himself. He’s in a hurry somewhere.’

  ‘Tiny’s a good one to start with. Start off small, eh. Start off tiny. Geddit?’ Jelly didn’t laugh.

  ‘I will.’ I panned after Tiny along the boulevard towards rue Bleu. I knew he’d go up the little alley just before it, because Bleu was bad with the gangs. As soon as he turned in, where his pink and gold silks wouldn’t be seen from back down the street, I squeezed. The Fiore thunked softly, like a high-class staple gun. Tiny starfished, fell and curled up like a prodded caterpillar. ‘He’s down.’ The relief was a spout of iced water in the middle of my back; I’d wanted a good start.

  ‘Dugald. Ugly mug. Pokes kiddies, too.’

  ‘They all do, if you listen to some people,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want him to start on those stories, thank you. ‘There he is, peeing on a tree.’

  ‘Excellent. Get him like that.’ Jelly scrambled around to look.

  Thunk. In the sights, Dugald arced over backwards, and his pee arced after him. He planted his face in the soft earth and lay still. ‘See the backflip?’ crowed Jelly. ‘Even I saw that!’

  ‘So I’ll get the hobbies?’ I hunted through the sights.

  ‘Naah, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s not waste ammo on ’em. Let’s only go for name brands, hey?’ He cackled and got out his notebook and pince-nez and push-pencil. ‘Ones we know and love,’ he added in an acid, upper-crust voice. He’d come a ways, too, only downwards.

  Jelly wrote the two names carefully in the book. He had quite a list already. ‘How’s it looking?’

  ‘Someone in white. Big.’

  ‘Could be Parrot?’

  ‘I thought Parrot was all colours. Um, like a parrot?’

  ‘Not these days. He went ironic, didn’t he?’ I could almost hear Jelly’s eyes rolling. ‘Set up a dialogue, you know? An opposition? Between signifier and signified? Tedious.’

  ‘Well, he’s got a green wig.’ I sensed there were a lot of rants and raves ready to run out of Jelly and pin back my ears.

  ‘Oh, it won’t be him, then.’

  ‘It’s written on him … Mint Patty.’

  ‘Course. Yeah, brrr. The ukelele man. What a gimmick. Yes, we have no bananas. I’ve got a luvverly bunch of—’

  ‘And Mista Glista.’

  ‘Blast him out of his sequins.’

  ‘They’re going off together, down towards the Palais.’

  ‘Anyone else with ’em?’

  ‘No, the others must be going to Nero’s. You rapid-fired with this thing?’

  ‘You bet. No problem for the Cha-cha to take ’em both out.’

  But they lined up so neatly I got them in one. ‘Will you look at that?’ I stepped back so he could check through the sights the puddle of white silks and orange sparklies, dropped neatly round the bend in the boulevard.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said smokily.

  I quite liked the smoke smell, and I could see what he meant about the feeling when you breathed it. I could take it up myself. But there were too many other things to spend money on right now. The borrow of this weapon, for a start. Tools to improve the world with. Tools for doing good.

  ‘Oh, look, they’re flooding out!’ Jelly was still at the sights. ‘Blackbird, Prince Prawn, the Tumblin’ Dice. Wouldn’t I like to put a rocket into that lot! Ants ’n’ Pants … Look, a Flying Orologio Brother! What a colourful band of beloveds. Which one’ll I pick off?’ He dialled with his cigarette hand, the smoke muddling the air around his fingers. ‘Ah, Your Highness. Not a good idea to split off to the pie shop today.’ Thunk, said the Fiore gently, as if it knew it had to stay secret. ‘And Blackety Blackbird, lighting up at the park gate? I don’t think so.’ Thunk. Could I ever be patient enough to save up for a Fiore of my own?

  Jelly stood back, coughing. ‘Here, you better get those Dice—they’re heading Dugald’s way. Any old sec they’ll turn and run.’

  ‘I’m onto it.’

  I caught them in the cross-whiskers just as they stopped and baulked. Thunk-thunk.

  ‘And then someone’ll see them,’ grumbled Jelly, ‘and someone’ll see that someone, and before you know it we’ll have a trail of ’em leading out into the open and the rest’ll go to ground.’

  ‘Yeah, but we’ll have got so many.’

  ‘But we won’t have chosen. We’ll just have dropped anyone who happened by.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s all good deeds.’ I didn’t care, as long as painted people were falling.

  ‘I guess.’ But he sounded unhappy.

  I got back to work, as much as I could. Most of the bouffons were gasbagging in groups on the boulevard, though one bunch of smartypantses were in the park swapping juggling secrets. There were just too many, all within sight of each other. ‘My mouth’s actually watering,’ I laughed to Jelly. ‘Imagine picking off Miam-Miam! Is it worth risking, d’you reckon?’

  ‘We’ve got the whole week. Let’s not get ’em really worried ’til, say, Thursday. Or they’ll all bunker down and we’ll sit here on our freezing bums wasting rental money. Who was that last one?’ he added, pencil poised.

  ‘Enigma.I popped ’im in the canal.’ With my bare eyes I could just make out the ballooned black cross of him, twirling slowly down the silver stormwater. ‘So, no more big names today?’

  ‘I’d say.’

  The sun came out, just the one patch cruising along the boulevard like a travelling spotlight, picking out the shimmering silks, the fright-wigs, the tinsel-cloaks, the red noses like an outbreak of pox. The buffoons did what you’d expect when the limelight hit them: spread their arms at themselves, kowtowed, cartwheeled and sprouted flowers.

  ‘Aw, gawd. It’d make you sick.’

  ‘Foul, eh?’ Jelly was leafing through his notebook.

  ‘Here come the Yellow Jerseys for the day. With a bottle. They’re cracking it.’

  ‘Blow ’em awa-ay,’ jeered Jelly. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Dunno—Hang on, it’s shaved into their hair. TAT… and … Tat and Tit?’

  ‘La-ame! Take ’em out!’

  ‘I can’t. They’re in a crowd. Everyone’s congratulating them, slopping fizz around.’

  ‘Rocket time! If only. No, maybe Thursday we’ll treat ourselves to a little mayhem. But we could pick off the Yellows every day. So by Wednesday they’ll know: if they win the Yellow, they’re worm-food. They’ll go pale under their pancake when they’re announced. Ha! Tit and Tat, eh?’

  ‘Tif. Tat and Tif.’ The names were the only hair the two had, in black on pink. The elastic of their giant white beards dug lines across their shiny pink scalps. ‘Frikkin’ … Santy Clauses or something.’

  Jelly hawked and spat. ‘Oh, how very à la mode. Cultural referencing. Like, what a contribution to the evolution of clowning. Puke-erama. Blow ’em. I hate ’em. And if they’re Yellow, they’ll only be trouble later.’

  ‘I never heard of them. They must be just jumped up from hobbies. I seen them before, though. Maybe in a troupe or something.’

  ‘They clear yet?’

  ‘They will be soon. Heading for the park. Swilling drink. Hang on, one of ’em’s choking on it.’

  ‘Make him die of that choking fit.’

  ‘If I could make it look natural. But you don’t jump two metres sideways in the middle of coughing. He’s okay now, anyway. That’s it, Tat, give him a good thump on the back. Oh, perfect sound effects, Jell—right in sync.’

  ‘Whassat?’ Despite that monstrous gob, Jelly’s voice still had major rattles.

  ‘Tif just hoiked and gobbed in perfect time with you. Nearly as much, too
.’

  ‘So they’re in the park? What are you waiting for?’

  ‘They’re in full view of the street.’

  ‘Blow ’em anyway. Let’s finish here and get some dinner. Couldn’t you go a schnitzel sandwich?’

  ‘They’re heading for that little glade, with the fountain. I’ll pop ’em there.’

  ‘You better. I’ve already written ’em down.’ He got up and shrugged on his backpack, slapped his pockets.

  ‘Okay, okay, give me a sec.’

  I flang Tat over the fountain, tumbled Tif as he fled towards the trees. Then I lovingly dismantled the Fioreschiacciare and its tripod and put them in the case, and we left.

  I always hated to stop, to find myself back on some rooftop stacked with age-old rubbish bags, or in some empty office strewn with files, dead clerks’ jackets over the backs of all the chairs. Plus the eating and networking part of the game didn’t grab me. Although, I’ll give you, it was better than not eating.

  I followed Jelly down the corridor, pushing through the dusty crimson interval-curtains, glimpsing rooms that were hardly trashed at all, the flocked gold paper still on the walls, the corners still fitted with honeywood prie-dieux, which one bad winter would turn into someone’s firewood. The troupes had been through just after the torch, defacing the place. Now, instead of the nuns’ Holy Man, the biggest bouffon of all, the Weeping Yay-Zou, mawked down on us from frame after curly-gilt frame, his red nose sometimes a plastic blister, sometimes lovingly painted red with a white dot of shine, sometimes a big cabochon ruby, almost worth pinching. Nah, hot rubies didn’t fetch as much as they used to—besides, what was I thinking? My thieving days were over; I was on the greener side of the fence now, eh?

  We went to the Puffin. It was pricier than the Spectacled Eider—we were paying for all the mirrors and chandeliers and plaster dolphins on the walls—but the food was better and we reckoned we deserved it. We had good soup and cod, and fine glasses of fizz, toasting our morning’s work and the days ahead of us. All around us were the people who keep the world running: riggers and sweepers, ticket-sellers and physiotherapists, with a sprinkling of top hats and tailcoats.