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I warmed up with simple target work, creating an X pattern on the wood. The audience applauded politely, and Tauseret retrieved the knives.
“But a knife can be deadly in the wrong hands,” I proclaimed. “Will the beautiful lady trust my skill?”
Tauseret nodded and stepped in front of the target. The audience murmured. She spread her arms and legs into a delicious X, an echo of the pattern I had drawn with steel. I wanted to miss her with my knives, but I did want to pin her there. I tried to wipe that desire from my head before I embarrassed myself in public.
The audience gasped as I outlined her with sharp blades while she stood motionless, smiling and serene, her eyes on me the entire time. I vowed that I would never betray her trust. The last knife I placed snug between her legs. The crowd cheered.
After we bowed to the audience, I escorted Tauseret through the curtains, my hand lightly on her elbow to lead her out.
“I must lie down,” she whispered.
“Did I frighten you?” I asked.
“No,” she reassured me, touching my face. “But I am weak. I cannot expect to be the woman I was for too long. I shall change to my shift and rest.”
I couldn’t follow; I had to introduce Apollo.
The children in the audience loved the dog boy. Some of them set to barking and had to be hushed. Apollo growled back at them, and the girls screamed with delight. I told an outrageous tale about him that featured his great hunting abilities and his preference for raw meat. “But his greatest skill is his singing,” I said to obvious disbelief.
The disbelief faded when Apollo sang the popular song “Come Home, Father” in his angelic voice. The words—those of a child who begs her drunken father to return from the saloon to the bedside of his dying son—caused more than one lady to wipe her eyes. After his song Apollo took my place and became the master of his own little troupe.
Moses made the ladies squeal when he popped his eyes. One young woman in the second row obliged him admirably by swooning not twice, but three times. Her beau almost dropped her the last time, he laughed so hard.
I wanted to check on Tauseret, but Minnie had a tantrum when I tried to leave the stage area. She said something bad would happen to me “at the stone bath.” I tried in vain to persuade her I was safe, for what could happen with all those people present? The skin of my back crawled, however, and I inspected the shadows.
In the background Willie sang minstrel ditties onstage. His father would probably find lyrics like “Possum fo’ yo’ breakfast” less than dignified, but the audience loved the boy, and I could tell he was enjoying himself too. In fact, there was an especial exuberance to all the children. They were performing because they wanted to, not because they had to, and they liked it.
I promised Minnie I would stay while she performed her act. My presence calmed her, and she achieved great success with her fortunes, even if she told one farmer there were crawly things in his corn. “You’ll have lots of lovely, fat babies,” she told the delighted young lady who had swooned. “And one ugly one,” she added, to howls of laughter from the audience. When she came off the stage to thunderous applause, she ran right by me and into Miss Lightfoot’s arms, as if she had never a care for me. Who could fathom small children?
Bertha announced she would recite a poem. I was surprised she knew one, but when I observed Mr. Ginger in the wings with an open volume, I knew him as the teacher. It made me apprehensive when she began “Requiescat,” by Oscar Wilde, considering the gentleman’s reputation, but near the end I realized that Mr. Ginger had merely tried to give words to Mr. Bopp’s grief.
“Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast;
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest. Peace, Peace; she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet;
All my life’s buried here,
Heap earth upon it.”
I heard a strangled cry of pain.
Mr. Bopp undulated past me and stuck his head through the curtains. “I’ve got a poem too. There once was a girl from Nantucket—’” I grabbed him by the waist and pulled him behind the curtain again. There were tears on his face, and my harsh words died in my throat. I patted his back.
“That’s over the line,” I said gently. “Bess would thrash you for that.”
Nervous laughter and anxious whispers came from the audience. “Can you go on with your embroidery now?” I asked.
“I reckon so,” said Mr. Bopp, somewhat chastened.
“Excuse my presumption, honey pie,” Miss Lightfoot said, and dabbed at his face with a handkerchief.
Minnie arrived with the embroidery frame. “Don’t forget,” she whispered at me fiercely. She glanced at the wall as if looking through to terrors outside, and I felt a chill.
