The Troupe (47 page)

Silenus stared at her, shocked. “But you can’t. We had an agreement.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said the lady. “We did. I agreed I would never harm you out of hate for what you did to my mother. But there is another whose harm you have to answer for.”

“Whose?” he asked.

“Mine,” said a faint voice.

They all turned, though George turned more slowly than the rest. Franny stood up underneath the tree, a little lumpy doll dragging itself to its feet.

“Franny?” said Silenus. “You? Why would you do this?”

“No,” she said. She began to walk forward.

“What? No? What do you mean? It’s not you?”

“Not no to that,” said Franny. She began walking down to him. “No to that name. You know that is not who I am. That is
not
my name.”

Silenus was quiet. Then a great horror began to creep into his face. “No. No, it can’t be…”

“Yes,” said Franny. “You know me, Bill. Of course you know me.”

To George’s shock, Silenus fell to his knees. And then Silenus, who had always been so distant and controlling, nearly began to weep. “My God,” he said. “My God, is it really you?”

“Yes,” she said. She stood between him and the lady. “It’s always been me. A very small part of me has always been trapped down here, buried under all this waking death. Buried by you, Bill. But I’ve always been here. Watching.”

Tears started flowing down Silenus’s cheeks. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Annie? Annie, can it really be you?”

Though it was but a whisper, to George the name was like a scream. It blared and echoed in his ears, and his mouth dropped open and he almost fell to the ground.

“What’s she talking about?” said Colette. “What is wrong with her?”

“Jesus,” said George faintly. “Jesus Christ, that’s who she is. She’s his wife. Franny is his wife.”

“What?” said Colette. “What the hell are you talking about, George?”

“He’s right,” said Franny. “Anne… Anne Sillenes. It’s so strange to say that name. I had almost forgotten it. It died with me, so long ago. Franny Beatty was a name you chose for me, Bill, picked at random out of the paper. But my real one’s always remained, echoing in the many empty places in my skull.”

“But how can this be?” Silenus said. “I haven’t spoken to you for half a century, my dear… I thought you were lost. How can you have come back to me now?”

“I haven’t come back to you, Bill,” said Franny, or perhaps it should have been Anne. “I was just
reminded
. This all started when you took me to the fairies, don’t you remember? It was an arrangement we made, when we first learned about the cancer. About the thing eating me up, behind my eyes.”

“It was the first of three visits,” said Ofelia. “You carried her to my mother after she’d passed, still streaked with grave dirt. You, a bereaved husband, with this poor, pale little thing with the pretty red hair in your arms. You sobbed like a child when you brought her, did
you not? And my mother took pity on you, and told you of a way, of symbols and etchings that can bring animation to the body.”

“Yes,” said Anne. She raised one hand and grasped her sleeve and pulled it back, displaying the countless black markings that wrapped around her arm like second skin. “You brought me back, Bill. Just like we’d discussed.”

“My God, my dear,” said Silenus. “I… I can’t believe it! I thought it hadn’t worked! When you came back, at first you were the same but… but then you changed.”

“That was because it
didn’t
work,” she said. “I was
not
back! The sleep took me, that waking death. I was so tired… Every second was an hour, every year a lifetime. My memories faded, and I could hardly remember who I was. Yet some part of me stayed alive, trapped behind miles of thick glass, watching the years slip before me. And when you brought me back to that house, it was like all the years were sloughed off my back, and I remembered… I remembered everything. Do you know what that was like, Bill? Can you have any idea what it feels like, to fall outside of time and shamble on, no more than a dazed, empty vessel?”

“No,” said Harry. “No, no, I couldn’t know what it was like for you.”

“You knew,” said Anne. “You knew what it would be like. And yet you let me live on.”

“I had to!” said Silenus. “I had no choice, I couldn’t bear to lose you! You were my darling, Annie, my everything! With you beside me everything made sense, and when you were gone…”

“When I was gone, you cursed me with this,” said Anne. “With this waking hell. You should have let me go! You should have killed me when you saw it hadn’t worked!”

“Don’t you think I tried?” cried Silenus. “But I’d lost you once, and then I had this… this puppet of a person, and while it
wasn’t
you it looked and sounded and smelled exactly
like
you. I couldn’t
kill
it! Could anyone?”

“Oh, Jesus…” whispered Colette.

“You would have if you loved me,” said Anne. “You should have let me
rest
, Bill. You should have let me go.”

“I couldn’t,” he said. “Not again. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“And instead you had what?” she asked. “You would keep some horrible memento of me staggering on behind you, while you lived your life and led the troupe on, and forgot about me?”

“Never,” said Silenus. “I never forgot about you.”

“Then explain them!” said Anne, and she pointed at George and Colette. “One you fathered upon some poor farm girl, and the other, hardly more than a child, you’ve enjoyed as you once did me!”

Colette’s hands flew to her face in shock, and she hid her eyes. Stanley shook his head and his grip grew tighter on George’s shoulder.

“It isn’t true,” said Silenus.

“Have you become a liar now?” shouted Anne. “I’ve
seen
the way you talk to her, the way you touch one another. You did it right in front of me, Bill! As if I weren’t even there!”

“But to me, you weren’t…” said Silenus. “It was like you were a stranger. As the years went by, you became someone else.”

“So you admit it. You did move on to other loves, and forgot me, left me watching. It is true?”

Silenus looked back at the three of them. His glance moved from face to face, and he seemed to come to a decision about something. He lowered his head and nodded. “It is.”

“Yes,” she hissed. “You left me to rot in the prison of my own body.”

“No!” he said. “That wasn’t it! You don’t know what I’ve done for you, Annie! When you died, I changed the very nature of the troupe! I started to put all of our efforts into finding the remains of the song! I thought if I did that, I could… I could figure out why such a thing could be allowed to happen, or even call the Creator back. Don’t you understand what an enormous victory that would be? That was why
I kept you on. It could fix you, fix me, fix everything! And I still can, Annie!” he said. “I can make it come back, and ask it to fix all of this!”

“Oh, Bill!” she cried. “As if the world were a simple machine that had thrown a few gears! How foolish can you be?”

“I can make it work, Annie! I just need a little more time.”

“You’re still the same person after all these years, no matter what name you use,” she said, and shook her head. “You still think you can find a solution to anything. I wish we had realized we got all the time we could, and cherished it.”

“I did cherish it,” said Silenus. He was nearly sobbing now. “I did.”

She reached out to touch the side of his face. He shut his eyes and leaned into her hand, letting her fingers graze his temple, his cheek. “So did I,” she said softly. “But I can’t forget what you put me through, or how you’ve lived before my very eyes.” Then she stepped back to stand beside the lady.

“Please don’t go,” said Silenus. “Please don’t leave me again.”

“I didn’t leave you,” she said. “I was taken from you, Bill. And you should have moved on. Look at what’s become of us—we can hardly recognize each other after what you allowed to happen.”

“But I can save you, Annie!” said Silenus. “I can save everyone, everything, I promise!”

“I know that reasoning is why you did what you did,” said Annie. “And that’s why I didn’t ask for your death. But you have to pay, Bill. You have to understand what you did to me. You have to pay.”

The lady asked, “Are you finished with him?”

Annie looked at Silenus longingly, then nodded. “I am.”

“Good,” said the lady. She looked to the fairies behind her, and said, “Beat him. Then cut his throat.”

Annie blinked in shock, and cried, “What?”

“No!” shouted George.

“I never said to kill him!” said Annie. “That was never the agreement!”

The lady looked down at her, yet as always it was impossible to tell what she was thinking. “Oh, did we? What was it we agreed on, exactly?”

“He was supposed to suffer, but not die! He was supposed to know what this felt like!”

The lady extended one long finger. It twitched back and forth chidingly, and she said, “No, that was not what we agreed. We agreed that he would know your pain.”

“My what?” said Anne, but then two pale faces emerged from the darkness behind her. The fairies each grasped an arm, and one grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her head back. Anne screamed in pain and rage, but the fairies easily held her. Though the symbols on her skin made her hugely strong, apparently this accounted for nothing against their makers.

“And your pain is a highly variable thing, is it not?” said the lady. “Why, if we were to beat you, we would have permission to beat him as well, wouldn’t we? And if we were to cut your throat…”

“You whore!” cried Silenus, rising to his feet.

Yet before he could do anything, the lady’s mocking finger turned to him. She tutted. “I would not use such language now, player. Those you care for now depend on my whims. Don’t they?”

Silenus looked back at George and the others.

“Don’t they?” she said again, menacingly.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. Then, to her servants, “Take this measly little dead thing away and put it out of its misery somewhere. There should do.” She pointed west to the base of the dam, next to the old railroad track, and with the gesture a grove of trees there bent aside to reveal a rusting train car. “You won’t die at our hands, my dear, I know that. The symbols my mother gave you make killing you terribly difficult, even for us. But you are not in my house anymore. And without that, why, I think you’ll soon forget everything again, won’t you? And you’ll go back to being a lost little dead thing, just like before…”

“No!” cried Franny. “Not that! Not that!”

Then came Silenus’s voice, surprisingly calm and soft: “Ofelia,” he said. “Ofelia, please.”

The lady’s head snapped around to look at him, and the trees shot up straight, as if there had been strings holding them back and they’d all been suddenly cut. She stood as still as a statue, watching him with her blank eyes.

“I did not kill Titania, Ofelia,” he said. “You know that. She died while fulfilling her bargain, while collecting the instruments to help us detect the song. She
helped
me, I would have never hurt her.”

“She died,” said Ofelia softly, “because of a story you told her. A lie you put in her heart.”

“I did not lie.”

“You did,” said the lady. “You put something in her that drove her mad. You gave her
hope
, singer, where there should have been none.”

“That hope was true,” said Silenus. “I have learned that. I wish now that I had listened to what I’d learned more often.”

“Then you are as worthless as your trite little performances,” said the queen. She nodded, and the two fairies began to drag Anne back into the darkness of the forest. She tried to scream, but one of them struck her on the side of the head, and the sound of the impact was so loud everyone paled to hear it. Then she hung limp in their arms and they were gone.

“In our revelries we have feasted upon many things,” said the lady. “Many strange animals, many exotic wines. And in our time we have gone beyond mere beasts. We have eaten heroes, and saints, and madmen, and several who were rumored to be gods. Yet I can think of no sweeter meat, no finer taste, than that of revenge. And tonight, once you are dead and spitted for us, I will know that taste. How does it feel to know that, singer?”

Silenus stared at where Anne had stood, his face ash-gray. Then he weakly said, “It feels like every other day, really.” With great effort, he collected himself. “What’s to happen to my compatriots?”

“I will not harm them.”

“Do you swear it?”

She did not nod or shake her head. Instead she cocked it to the side, like a snake fascinated by its prey, and said nothing.

“Swear it, damn you!”

She shrugged. “Fine. I swear I will not harm them.”

“All right,” said Silenus. He swallowed and nodded. “If I am to die, then I suppose I will die. But may I make one last request, as one imbiber to another?”

“A request?”

“There’s a bottle of wine I have, a vintage that was popular in my home,” he said. “It is no great wine, it’s a peasant’s drink. But it’s one I would like to taste again in my last moments.”

The lady nodded her head back and forth as she thought about it. “You must understand how much this sounds like treachery.”

“I do. And I’m willing to let you inspect the bottle, or whatever you would wish.”

The lady considered it, and sighed. “I suppose I can understand such a last wish. Even from a thing as hateful as you. Bring me the bottle.”

Silenus nodded and walked to the steamer trunk. He undid one clasp, and the other, and George braced himself, expecting something great to happen, some explosion or trickery, or perhaps the First Song itself would pour out and come to their aid…

But it did not. When the lid creaked open he saw there was no song inside, and no light. Only several rows of glass bottles, each filled with some liquor or tincture or another. George was so surprised he cried out in dismay, “What are those?”

Silenus looked up at him. “They are restoratives, mostly. What did you think would be in here?” He selected a bottle with a particularly fine cork and opened it. He walked over to the lady, proffering the open bottle, and her seneschal walked forward and took it.
The seneschal swirled the wine around a bit, sniffed it, and took a sip.