I made it effortless. Of course it was not; the smallest move takes a thousand hours of practice. But in those moments I was no longer myself. I danced on silken cords so thin that they were barely visible from the ground, using the linked rings to travel from one to the other, as Gabriel once taught me, a lifetime ago, by the orange caravan with the tiger and the lambs. Sometimes I sang, or made wild sounds in my throat. People looked up at me in superstitious awe and whispered that I must indeed be of another breed, that perhaps somewhere beyond the oceans just such a race of fox-haired harpies swooped and soared over the endless blue acres. Needless to say, LeMerle did nothing to discourage this kind of thinking. Nor did I.
As months passed, and years, our act grew in popularity until we were courted from Paris to province. It made me bold; there was nothing I would not dare. I devised wilder leaps, more breathtaking flights between the poles, leaving the others far below me. I added more levels of cord to the act: swings, a trapeze, a suspended platform. I performed in trees and over water. I never fell.
Audiences loved me. Many believed LeMerle’s fiction: that I was of another race. There were rumors of witchcraft, and a few times we were forced to leave a town in haste. But those times were few; our fame spread, and at LeMerle’s orders we moved north again toward Paris.
Two and a half years had passed since our flight from the city. Time enough, said the Blackbird, for our little contretemps to have been forgotten. Besides, he had no ambition to reenter Society; the king was getting married, and we were not alone in making for the celebrations. Every troupe in the country was doing the same: actors, jugglers, musicians, dancers. There was money to be made, said LeMerle, and with a little imagination, a little initiative, we could make a fortune.
But by this time I knew him too well to believe the simple explanation. That look was back in his eyes-the look of dangerous enjoyment he wore when planning an outrageous venture-and I was wary from the first.
“He’s hunting a tiger with a pointed stick,” Le Borgne was wont to say. “Finding it’s the easy part, but God help us all if he runs it to ground.”
LeMerle, of course, denied any such intent. “No mischief, I promise you, my Harpy,” he said, but with so much suppressed laughter in his voice that I did not believe him. “What, are you afraid?”
“Of course not.”
“Good. This is no time to start suffering from nerves.”
8
It was the height of l’Ailée’s career. We had money, fame; crowds adored us, and we were coming home. With the approach of the king’s wedding, Paris was in perpetual carnival; spirits were high; drinking deep, purses loose; and you could smell the hope and the money and, behind that, the fear. A wedding, like a coronation, is a time of uncertainty. Rules are suspended. New alliances are made and broken. For the most part, they mean little to us. We watch the big players on France’s stage, simply hoping that they will not crush us. A whim could do it; a king’s finger is heavy enough to wipe out an army. Even a bishop’s hand, cleverly wielded, may crush a man. But we at the Théâtre des Cieux did not consider these things. We could have read the signs if we had chosen to, but we were drunk on our success; LeMerle was hunting his tigers and I was perfecting a new-and increasingly dangerous-routine. Even Le Borgne was uncharacteristically cheery, and when we received word on entering Paris that His Majesty had expressed an interest in watching us perform, our elation knew no bounds.
The days that followed passed in a blur. I’ve seen kings come and go, but I’ve always had a soft spot for King Henri. Perhaps because he cheered so heartily on that day; perhaps because his face was kind. This new Louis is different: this little boy. You can buy his portrait in any market, crowned with a sun halo and flanked by kneeling saints, but he makes me fearful with his wan face and heart-shaped mouth. What can such a little boy know of anything? How can he rule France? But all that was to come; when l’Ailée performed at the Palais-Royal, we had more security, more happiness than we had enjoyed since before the wars. This marriage-this alliance with the Médicis-proved it; we saw it as a sign that our luck had turned.
It had-but not for the better. The night of our performance we celebrated with wine and meat and sweet pastries, and then Rico and Bazuel went to watch a wild-beast show near the Palais-Royal while the others got even more drunk and LeMerle went off on his own toward the river. Later that night, I heard him return, and when I passed his caravan I saw blood on the steps and I was afraid.
I tapped at the door and, receiving no answer, went inside. LeMerle was sitting with his back to me on the floor, with his shirt wadded against his left side. I ran to him with a cry of dismay; there was blood all over him. More blood, in fact, than real hurt, as I discovered to my relief. A short, sharp blade-not unlike my own-had glanced off his ribs, leaving a shallow, messy gash about nine inches long. At first I assumed he had been attacked and robbed-a man in Paris by night needs more than luck to protect him-but he still had his purse, and besides, only a very inept footpad would have dealt him such a clumsy blow. As LeMerle refused to tell me what had happened, I could only conclude that this mischief was somehow of his own making and dismiss it as an isolated case of ill fortune.
But there was more bad luck to come. The following night, one of our caravans was set on fire as we slept, and only chance saved the rest. As it was, Cateau got up for a piss and smelled smoke: we lost two horses, the bulk of our costumes, the caravan itself, of course, and one of our number: little Rico, who had got blind drunk during the evening and failed to awaken to our cries. His friend Bazuel tried to go in after him, though we could see it was hopeless from the start, but he was overcome by smoke before he even got close.
It cost him his voice: when he recovered, he was unable to speak in anything above a whisper. Even after that, I think, his heart was broken. He drank like a sponge, picked fights with anything that moved, and performed so badly in his act that in the end, we had to leave him out altogether. When, some months later, he chose to leave us, no one was surprised. And anyway, as Le Borgne said, it wasn’t as if we had lost a rope-dancer. Dwarves could always be replaced.
We left Paris furtively and in somber mood. The celebrations were far from over, but now LeMerle was eager for us to be gone. Rico’s death had affected him more than I had expected; he ate little: slept less: snapped at anyone who dared speak to him. It was the first time I had ever seen him truly angry. It was not for Rico, I soon realized-nor even for the damaged equipment-but for his own humiliation, the spoiling of our triumph. He had lost the game: and more than anything else, the Blackbird hated to lose.
No one had noticed anything on the night of the burning. LeMerle, however, had his suspicions, though he would not speak of them. Instead, he sank into a dangerous silence, and not even the news that his old enemy, the Bishop of Evreux, had been waylaid by footpads a few days before was enough to brighten his spirits.
After Paris, we made our way south. Bazuel left us in Anjou, but we gained two more people in the months that followed: Bécquot, a one-legged fiddle player, and his ten-year-old son, Philbert. The boy was a natural on the high rope, but he was too reckless; he took a bad fall later that year and was useless for months. All the same, LeMerle kept him with us through the following winter and, although the boy was never fit for the flying act again, fed him and found him useful work to do until he was finally able to place him with a group of Franciscans who, he said, would care for him. Bécquot was grateful, and I was surprised, for business had taken a bad turn and money was short. Le Borgne simply shrugged and muttered something about tigers. But, as I said, LeMerle could be sentimental about the oddest things.