She had come to return a script to the Gypsy; now she clutched it close to her pounding heart. She knew she shouldn't watch the naked man and woman, but nothing short of Atticus could have moved her from that spot.
Fancy held her breath and watched.
Magda, sleek as a panther, moved toward Jarvis, where he lay propped up against the cushions of her bed. She pulled back the quilt that covered his loins, and stared at the evidence of what her performance had provoked. Then, reaching out, unhurriedly, she touched the tip of his swollen manhood with skilled fingers.
"So you still care about your Magda?" she said, amusement in her voice, and bent her tongue to the place her fingers had touched. Jarvis groaned with pleasure and, leaning forward, buried his face in her fragrant hair as he allowed the maddening rhythm of her lips and tongue to banish fear and failure and poverty and everything else from the world for a little while at least.
"No!" he said sharply when the insistent mouth was finally more than he could bear. "Not yet, my Magda."
She moved her head from between his thighs, and he felt the sharp loss of her warm mouth as it let him slide reluctantly free. Grasping her shoulders in firm hands, he turned her body, trading places with her.
Fancy strained to see what they were doing; her heart pounded and a peculiar ache pervaded her female parts. She could see only slivers of the drama within, tantalizing her imagination.
Magda lay back, open to him, eyes closed, lips parted with sweet memory of the pleasure she had given.
Jarvis slid his hands over her warm flesh in a proprietary way, as if checking all the places that belonged to him, caressing as he inventoried. He felt the shift of power; he was the giver now. Slowly, teasingly, he sucked each dark nipple in turn, as his hands moved to the places he knew craved touching.
He sensed her desire, felt her struggle with herself not to ask for what she needed, but to let him find his own way.
Kneeling beside her face, Jarvis brushed his penis across her open lips; she reached her tongue for him, but he eluded her.
"He is so big ... so beautiful," she murmured, her voice husky with wanting. "I love his bigness."
"I know," he said quietly. He was in control. He had always known.
Parting her thighs, he stroked the fragile skin closest to the core of her. Magda moaned with pleasure and longing, arched herself toward his teasing hands. He slid a finger into her openness, slowly, infuriatingly; he stroked the slippery inner folds of her, sensing the swelling he provoked there.
She felt his manhood enter with such exquisite knowledge of its path. Long, languid strokes, each one deeper than the last. Coaxing. Teasing. Tormenting. Strokes of amazing force and confidence.
When the exquisite quivers came, Magda abandoned herself to them, sucking the source of her pleasure into herself hungrily. Desperate, perfect relief and agony combined. It was enough to fulfill. It could never be enough.
Magda felt herself folded close in his enveloping arms as his own fulfillment surged its way into her. v
It would be hard to leave Jarvis, the thought crossed her mind idly as they lay in the soft bliss of afterward. She had never meant to stay.
Fancy, weak with confusion and longing, crept down the wagon steps soundlessly and made her way back to her own wagon. Images of what she'd witnessed possessed her. So this was what men and women did when they loved . . . this primitive, animal act of lust that was somehow beautiful and holy.
"How come you still got that script?" Atticus asked as she entered the wagon. He peered at her closely; her face was flushed and she seemed feverish. "You feelin' poorly, Fancy?" he asked.
Her heart beat so forcefully she could hardly speak. "No," she managed to say. "Magda wasn't there. I'll give it back to her in the morning. I'm fine, Atticus. I just want to go to bed."
Atticus, wondering at her strange behavior, turned out the lamp and Fancy lay in her bed with forbidden visions tumbling all around her in the dark.
Fancy looked around the circle of faces that had gathered near the circus master's wagon for their final strategy meeting before clattering into the town of their next performance. By now, she and Atticus knew each of the little troupe so well, it seemed they had known them always. Tobey, the clown, the three Marcato brothers who walked the high wire and acted in plays if a Latin lover or bandito was called for. Melisande, the equestrienne daredevil who had been born Mary Ellen Quinn in the horse country of County Wicklow. The actors and actresses, the freaks, the artists, and the workers who made up the circus contingent, all were familiar to her now.
The strangest members of the company were Harp and Flute, the Siamese twins, joined somehow at the lower body—a curious garment hid the exact nature of their connection. They were married to twin sisters Lena and Tina, one a singer and one an exotic dancer.
Magda told Fancy the Siamese twins solved their peculiar marital situation by living three days with one sister, then three days with the other. They were perpetually jolly, despite the locomotive difficulties their four scuttling legs caused them. As far as Fancy could tell, they were content with their domestic arrangement. The Siamese twins were the circus's greatest drawing card, Gitalis had assured her—even better than the elephant for getting people to buy tickets.
"When we arrive in Council Bluffs," intoned Jarvis, striding up and down importantly in front of his little audience, "Tobey, you will lead Genghis into the town square, where you will perform your winsome antics to draw the attention of the crowd." Wes' flamboyance and his shock of snowy hair made him seem more messiah than man, Fancy thought as she watched him mesmerize the performers.
"Atticus, you will drive the wagon with our advertisement emblazoned on the side. You will be garbed in your minstrel outfit and will play the banjo to keep the crowd lively." Atticus nodded agreement; he and Fancy were so happy with the circus. He looked into her shining face, no longer stained mahogany but simply tanned by the sun, and felt content.
"The rest of you . . ." Wes waved his expressive hands in benediction over the assorted others: Wu the Chinese cook, Edgar the elephant boy, Donny and Johnny, the grips, Minnie and Horace, the husband and wife who were fine actors on their way to the gold fields of California—eighteen people in all, if you counted Harp and Flute as two.
"You will pitch the tent and tune up the calliope . . ." Jarvis' resonant voice was merry and mischievous. "You will set up the sideshow and hang out the banners, and by nightfall some small patch of land will be not Council Bluffs, but Camelot!"
A babble of excited laughter greeted the speech. There was magic in Wes Jarvis, a hypnotism that lifted everyone, even the circus people who knew his tricks, out of the humdrum.
"He almos' as good a conjurer as Atticus," the old man chuckled, getting to his feet and helping Fancy up too.
"I love the circus, Atticus!" she blurted out. "I love the whole troupe of them and the animals and the plays." She took a deep, satisfied breath, drinking everything in.
"Dey's your family now, child."
"You're my family."
"Dat's true, too. But I'm gittin' on in years, Fancy. One a dese days I be headin' out and you be on your own."
"Not 'til we get to California and find the gold there," she said, as if that were a given.
"No. Not 'til den."
"Tell me again what we'll do when we find the gold, Atticus." She slipped her hand into his and fell into step beside the old giant. She'd spent little time alone with him since joining the theatrical company; there were parts to learn and songs to rehearse and a constant barrage of new information to absorb. But the stories of what they would do when they found the gold, the ones that had sustained her in their travels together, were still their special conspiracy.
"Well, now, let's jest see. . . . First thing, we buy us a real house to live in wif fine furniture and dishes and silverware jest like Beau Rivage." He heard her giggle contentedly, and it made his heart feel light.
"Den we git us a fine old horse an
d carriage so's we kin see de sights in Californy. Big place, Californy, we gonna need to git around."
"I want matched black stallions," she responded, loving the familiar game.
"Well now, honey, stallions don't seem to be a real good bet for pullin' carriages. How's 'bout we git us a nice li'l pair of geldings, wif real level heads?"
"All right, if we must. But I'll need lots and lots of clothes. Gorgeous clothes, with feathers and lace and fancy buttons. And jewels, Atticus, jewels like my mama had!"
"My, my, child!" The old man chuckled. "We's gonna have to find us a real big gold mine to git all dat outta it!"
Fancy laughed and hugged him. Atticus was dearer to her than she could admit even to herself; each time he spoke of "goin' on" without her, terror constricted her heart. He was the lifeline; he was her friend. She kissed him on the cheek, a big stretch on tiptoe, then waved as she veered off toward Magda's wagon. They were performing Ten Nights in a Barroom for tonight's audience, and she wanted to check the costumes one more time to make sure they were perfect.
God, how she loved acting. Because of her delicate features, she could play a child as well as an ingenue, and once Wes had heard her sing, she'd been made a regular part of the minstrel shows. She didn't mind being in blackface now, for it was temporary— besides, she told Atticus proudly, she could talk "nigra" better than any white girl alive. She was getting to be a woman, too, with nature and Magda as her guides.
Wes was right about the theatre being a privilege, Fancy thought gaily as she made her way to the wagon. All her dreams were coming back into focus—there were possibilities again.
During their wanderings, Fancy had wondered, when she dared, how she could ever make her way back into the white man's world, the world of plenty. Now she knew the theatre was the answer. She would be a brilliant actress and singer, famous and desirable. Wes said a great performer could cross all boundaries of class and privilege. The magic worked not only for the audience, but for the players as well ... in the theatre anyone could become someone.
"You fill that child's head with dreams," Magda chided, her throaty voice a sensuous purr on the night air.
"Not dreams but hopes, my Magda," Jarvis replied, looking up at the stars. "She has need of them."
"And she is not so much a child anymore, my observant one. Is she?"
Jarvis looked at the woman sharply, a half smile on his lips. "Are you jealous, my wildcat?"
"Youth is to be envied," she replied with a sigh. "I feel old tonight."
"And why is that?"
"I have done the cards." She said it as if the statement explained everything.
"Your magic is greater than mine, Magda," Jarvis said sadly.
"My magic is nothing! I know nothing. I am a fraud and my magic is an illusion I conjure for fools!"
Jarvis looked at the Gypsy strangely. It was unlike Magda to deny her powers with him, for he alone knew that they were not fraudulent. She was greatly gifted.
"You are no charlatan, my Magda."
"Ah, my old friend, but tonight I wish I were."
"What did you see that upset you so?"
"The girl will have a strange life. A disturbing life. Her journey has just begun."
"She will not be loved?"
"She will be loved too much. There will be too much of everything. Great riches. Fame. All, too much."
Jarvis laughed mirthlessly. "Such a destiny I could envy."
"No! Great dangers stalk her path."
"And mine?"
Magda looked at the handsome, aging man; her eyes glittered oddly in the moonlight and he could not tell if there were tears in them.
"Your destiny is to make love to me tonight," she said offhandedly, and turned to mount the steps to her wagon, her skirt a paisley swirl. Every gesture is calculated to arouse a man, he thought, knowing better than to press her for information she did not wish to give.
It was a curse to know the future.
"How much is in the coffers, my faithful Gitalis?" Jarvis asked, pulling off his costume boots and flexing his toes in the lamplight of the wagon.
"Not enough to make us rich," replied the cynical voice. "But enough to keep our children fed."
The circus master sat down wearily on the bed, but he smiled as he spoke.
"Genteel sufficiency, eh, my fine friend. What more can one ask?"
"Superfluity, perhaps."
Jarvis laughed aloud, his laugh a deep, hearty sound in the small space.
"We are doing better since those two joined us, though. That you must admit. Magda says they bring good luck with them."
"Magda! Magda predicts what she wants us to believe."
"Ah, but that is merely human nature, Gitalis, and Magda is the most human of women. But do not underestimate her powers. Mark me well, my Sancho Panza, she knows things we do not."
"She seems willing enough to teach you all she knows."
"And you are jealous, little man?" Jarvis asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow. He and Gitalis had been friends for a lifetime, it sometimes seemed.
"She is much woman for a small person like myself, Maestro," the dwarf replied with a lascivious smirk. "But I am lonely. I will try to find someone my own size in the next town."
"There are good things in store for us in the next town, Gitalis."
"Always you think there is something good in the next town. Eternal optimist. Like the Fool in the tarot."
"This time it's true," Jarvis persisted, burrowing beneath the coverlet.
Gitalis smiled and blew out the candle before removing his own clothes and lying down on his small bed.
Jarvis was a remarkable man. A gifted actor and illusionist, possessor of a vast repertoire of Shakespearean plays as well as contemporary ones; a man with the charisma to draw the crowds and the showmanship to send them away satisfied. But he had too soft a heart, and consequently the company always had too many mouths to feed.
They could draw the same crowds with half the players and the money would go farther. But any sob story moved Jarvis to generosity—any freak of nature, out-of-work actor, or oddity unable to work elsewhere had a place with his troupe. And wasn't he, Gitalis, a fine one to quarrel with such largesse? Where else but with Jarvis would an overeducated dwarf with total recall and a desperate love for Shakespeare find employment? He laughed softly at his own foolishness.
Yet this was hard country for touring, too, and it bore watching with more caution than Jarvis knew. Not like the South before the war, where they'd made their easy way from town to town, and plantation to plantation, through benevolent weather and generous audiences.
The war had come and they had headed west. It was their destiny, Magda said. "The old witch," he grumbled. Hard as he tried, he could never figure her out. "Jealous, lustful little man," he chided himself. "You are cranky only because you lack a woman." He resolved to seek out the acquiescent Lena the following day. Unlike her sister, Tina, who remained faithful to her husband, Flute, Lena had no scruples about sharing her favors. "I already sleep with two," she would say, with some justification. "Why not more?"
Grumpily, he punched the pillow into submission, and nestling his small body into a fetal ball, Gitalis went to sleep.
Living space was scarce, so Fancy and Atticus sometimes shared a wagon with Wu the Chinese cook. Jolly and irascible, one moment slapping his frying pan against his knee with laughter, the next chasing one or more of the Marcatos around the campfire with the same weapon, Wu was unlike anyone Fancy had ever encountered.
He spoke an astonishing pidgin English—Cantonese liberally interspersed with American curse words.
"Sailor cut off Wu pigtail, fuckin' good!" he had explained when first they met. "Wu get shanghaied. No pigtail, no go back to China." Then he had laughed uproariously as if the whole episode was hilarious.
"Wu fix 'em good. Wu make big million dollar in gold mine. Grow new hair. Go back to China rich like Mandarin. Fucky, fucky!"
Wu made an
elaborate ritual of everything he did, from boiling
water to going to bed at night. He was fastidious in all things and prided himself on being the best cook in the United States.
"But you're not in the United States anymore, Señor Wu," Jose Marcato would tease him.
"Then Wu best cook in Nebraska Territory, son of a worm!" he would shout back and take out after the young man, brandishing a butcher knife.
Wu kept a strongbox in his kitchen wagon and every night he would unstrap it from its place and count his treasure. Fancy had not seen him actually do this, but Tobey had done an imitation in mime and Magda had confirmed that it was so.
Fancy watched Wu bustle around the broad-beamed, sturdily built chuck wagon that was the hub of his domain. The morning air had sharpened her appetite.
Wu's wagon was an extraordinary feat of practical engineering, a basic flatbed wagon refurbished to accommodate the needs of the troupe. A huge water barrel was strapped to its side; bulk foods such as beans, sugar, dried apples, grain, potatoes, and onions were stored along its floor. Bentwood bows supported the canvas roof, while a toolbox filled with the essentials of frontier life was attached with iron bands to its side. A coffee grinder decorated the wagon's outer shell, as did the lantern hooks, stake ropes, and pans too big for storage within.
Most ingenious of all, to Fancy's mind, was the hinged rear wooden flap that swung down to form a working table. When the flap was down, supported by its sturdy legs, the interior network of functional cubes was displayed. Shelves for coffeepot, bread bowl, chewing tobacco tin, and vinegar urn became visible. Cubbies stuffed with the Dutch ovens, skillets, molasses and whiskey jars that were the staples of life on the journey. Hanging hooks for the razor strop, and any other items that needed fastening, lined the interior of the largest spaces. There were big drawers filled with salt and lard and baking soda, and smaller ones where tiny phials with Chinese characters on their labels were kept by Wu, with an air of secrecy, next to his precious sewing kit and bandages.