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Chapter 1 of The Vanquished & the Surviving:
Chapter 43:
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The Vanquished & the Surviving, Chapter 44
That evening was supposed to be a delightful outing at the Drury Lane Theatre. Margot, with Vincent, Roland, Percy, Aunt Callandra and Uncle Roderick, all exited a capacious barouche in front of the theater facing Catherine Street. Margot looked up at the Palladian façade: steps lead up to the row of three double doors below archways. The steady rain had ceased falling minutes before the barouche doors swung open, and the sky was still dark gray and cloudy.
Other theater-goers were stepping out of carriages and gathering before the steps, where they stood chatting and chuckling. The most noticeable theater-goers were a cluster of five young fops wearing the brightest colors imaginable, waving their hands about effeminately, and peering about through quizzing glasses.
Margot buzzed with excitement over the prospect of a new production of The Tempest. She knew it would be three hours long—and they were arriving late enough to miss what she presumed to be an inane pantomime. Callandra and Roderick had argued with Margot and Roland about setting foot in public. The twins convinced their aunt and uncle it would only be this one occasion, before they resumed behaving like hermits until the ball.
Margot, with the others nearby, trod upon the theater’s lowest step. She raised her left foot to the second step, when a hubbub occurred: the theater’s identical black central double doors flew open, and shouts echoed in the brisk evening air.
A figure in black trousers, a black waistcoat, and rolled-up shirt sleeves charged down the steps, waving his arms. As he came closer, Margot realized he was no older than she and probably a stage hand. She wondered at his behavior, and she observed out of the corner of her eye the fops and other audience members pausing in their animated conversations to eye the impertinent cause of the interruption.
“Tonight’s play has been canceled!” the young man in shirtsleeves announced to the crowd. “The inconvenience is unfortunate, but the show won’t go on.” The crowd gasped and murmured.
Margot saw movement out of her peripheral vision: the cause seemed to be a long and flowing garment. She turned and looked directly… at several Marshals descending the stairs toward the theater-goers. She counted six cloaked figures before she darted a glance at the small crowd gathered on the sidewalk. She exchanged a look with Roland before taking a step back and wondering how her brother and she could remain unnoticed.
Margot clutched Roland’s arm and, slowly tipping her head aside and clutching the brim of her top hat, she deftly shifted both herself and Roland, until they had their backs to the Marshals.
Vincent grasped Margot’s other arm and whispered. “What are you doing?”
“We don’t wish the Marshals to recognize us.”
“You aren’t behaving inconspicuously enough.”
Roland looked sharply at his cousin. “What can you mean?”
Vincent bit his lip and darted his eyes around the small crowd. “You need to be… invisible. Hidden behind others. But you’re so tall, it will be difficult.”
Margot sighed. “Right, well—I suppose it is best to stand closer to other members of the crowd and mimic their behavior.” As Margot spoke, she tugged on Roland’s arm, and he, in a docile manner, followed her. With Vincent, they stepped quietly until they stood very near other well-heeled theater-goers. Margot stood directly behind a tall woman who wore a turban topped with looming ostrich plumes. Although Margot was the taller of the two women, the plumes were sufficient for hiding. Margot released Roland’s arm. “It might be well if we separated, at least by a few feet—another woman is wearing a plumed hat over there.” She nodded in the direction of a similarly turbaned woman.
“I’m too tall to hide behind her feathers. Vincent, you do it.”
Vincent shrugged but did as he was bid. Margot observed Percy’s curly golden head following Vincent and catching up with him. Good show, Percy. She wished she had been a little quicker-thinking herself. If only she had considered blending in with the crowd before Vincent approached and criticized her behavior. However, it was pointless to fret over such trivial matters.
Margot glanced up at Roland and frowned. He still stood close beside her, and he stood head above the crowd at six foot four. She sighed, knowing they could do nothing about it. She stood so close behind the be-plumed woman that she feared if she so much as whispered to Roland, the woman would hear her. Best to remain silent and watch the Marshals, same as most of the crowd. Roland bent his knees, taking off a few inches, and removed his top hat.
Margot finally noticed two stagehands reluctantly walked between the Marshals. The workers were recognizable by their casual and drab attire. The Marshals gripped them by the arms, just above the elbow, and Margot’s eyes widened to see the stage hands wore chains connecting their wrists.
One of the Marshals, in a booming voice, announced, “This theater is closed! The production is over!”
The crowd gasped and murmured.
“Nobody cause trouble, unless you wish to join these Sensitive stagehands in a dungeon!”
The stagehands in handcuffs called out to the crowd of theatergoers.
“We used our Sensitive powers onstage!”
“For the illusions of the stage! A bit of sleight of hand, no more!”
“Thunder and lightning that resembles thunder and lightning, not rattling tin. What is the harm in our work?”
Margot noticed Vincent begin moving forward toward the stage hands. He stepped on a fop’s heel and hastily backed away while the fop grumbled and cast an indignant glance over his shoulder. Vincent dodged to his right and hid behind a different fop. Margot grasped her hands together in sympathy with Vincent’s wish to interfere frustrated by his wish to not be imprisoned again.
Another stagehand yelled, “This is an outrage!”
The gathered crowd, all dressed up to see a play, stood watching flabbergasted as the Marshals took the stagehands away. Margot clenched her fists and wished someone would step forward and rescue the stagehands. For a second, she thought of the upcoming ball and hoped that would inspire enough citizens to finally take action.
Margot looked toward the rain-drenched cobblestone street, at a row of identical black barouches. Vincent edged closer to her and whispered, “Those carriages look exactly like the one in which I traveled with the Marshals, and the one in which I returned with the Herald.”
A man in a dark greatcoat and top hat stepped forward and stood directly in front of the Marshals and a hunch-shouldered prisoner. The Marshals and stagehand stopped in their tracks out of necessity, with the fellow between them and the row of carriages. This would-be audience member appeared to be of modest means, someone likely to sit in the stalls, not a box. “I say, what do you think you’re doing? There’s no call to prevent a play from continuing and to abscond these hardworking stagehands.”
A lady with tall plumes on her headdress stepped up beside him. Roland sidled behind another lady with similar feathers. The first lady exclaimed, “Yes, precisely! They earn an honest wage in the theater. Would you rather they picked your family’s pockets on the streets?”
The fellow in the greatcoat glared at the lady and crossed his arms. “Well, madam, it is not like they can’t do anything besides either work in theater or pick pockets!”
Margot stiffened her shoulders. “Oh, brilliant, class warfare on the street.”
Another theater-goer of limited means slapped his leg. “I declare, they’d do fine using Sensitive powers to pick pockets!”
“Enough!” a Marshal shouted in a deep, ringing baritone. He shoved the first gentleman out of the way, and the be-plumed lady stepped backward and stumbled on an uneven paving stone in the walkway. Two others took her gently by the elbows before she could fall to the ground.
“Don’t obstruct justice!” the baritone Marshal said, as he and his companion resumed hastening the reluctant, chained stagehands toward a brougham straight ahead of them, mere feet away.
“This is not justice!” Margot didn’t know who yelled.
Margot pressed her lips tightly together and crossed her arms. She felt her cheeks burn and shoulders tense. Justice, indeed! She began stepping forward to reprimand the Marshal, but Roland’s gentle hand resting on her shoulder reminded her to lay low. The Marshals wouldn’t hesitate to swoop forward and take the Montmorency twins, if they knew of their presence. Neither twin had the advantage of the Sensitive power of invisibility.
The baritone Marshal stalked forward. “Cornelius Fawlkin himself will hear about this, be sure of it!” The protestors fell silent and stepped back, while the Marshals continued toward their dark carriages. Margot wasn’t under the impression that the Marshal had the individuals’ names, and she considered it an idle threat.
Margot blinked and saw an elegant woman in a lavender pelisse and white, pearl-bedecked turban step silently forward from the crowd of would-be theater-goers. She held her hands slightly out from her body as though she were carrying a crystal ball before her, but her hands appeared empty save for the lavender silk reticule dangling from her wrist.
Margot widened her eyes and watched: the lady raised her hands, and in them appeared flaming, almost white spheres. She flung them forward, and they hit two Marshals, one on the cloaked shoulder and another in the chest as he or she was, with outstretched arm, clutching a chained stagehand and dragging him toward a barouche.
The two Marshals, their cloaks on fire, screamed and released the chained stagehands while they fell to the cobblestones and rolled. The flames, however, spread, and the two Marshals continued screaming. The bystanders quietly watched, and Margot thought she saw a fop clapping his hands.
The Marshals who weren’t on fire reacted promptly. No longer convinced the crowd was compliant, they moved more rapidly toward their carriages, dragging the stagehands, who groaned at the tugging of iron on their wrists and, in two cases, their ankles. The flames were dying at last, and Margot concluded that fireballs weren’t impressive after all.
The leading Marshal turned away from the carriage into which this cloaked figure was about to step and trod nearer the elegant lady, whom Margot recognized as Lady Vanessa Barrington, a leader of fashion and passionate patroness of the arts. Lady Vanessa stood defiantly, golden-haired head thrown back, and glared. With no compunction, the Marshal sneered at her and raised one finger, pointing.
Percy gasped. “How rude!”
Margot felt an instinctive dread that the pointing finger signified more than rudeness. She stepped a fraction closer to Roland, but her arms remained crossed, as she stared with bated breath at the Marshal with the raised finger. Time seemed to slow down.
The Marshal stood glaring at Lady Vanessa and pointing his finger at her. She froze in place. Margot was struck by her stillness and sensed she was in fact unable to move as long as the Marshal pointed at her. As Lady Vanessa stood, an eerie green glow suffused her from head to toe and became brighter and brighter. It began as dots like stars in the sky, but the dots multiplied and multiplied.
The crowd of theater-goers stood perfectly still and stared in horror as Lady Vanessa began glowing, shimmering green, brighter and brighter until her entire body was emerald green and lighting up the night. The coat of light rain on the paving stones glistened in this green glow, and for two seconds Margot looked about to clearly perceive all the vehicles, all traffic trundling past with the clopping of horses’ hooves, and the now-greenish front facade of the Drury Lane Theatre and the tall, narrow four-story houses on either side of the theater.
Margot imagined darting in front of Lady Vanessa, but surely anyone who did so would glow green and die.
Lady Vanessa emitted a gasp. Margot saw her at a three-quarters angle, but she saw her face clearly enough to notice her eyes and mouth widen. As Margot watched in horror and helplessness, Lady Vanessa began to fade in particles. The green glow resumed its dot-like appearance, but as this occurred, the lady’s body became nothing but the dots. The dots came to be fewer and fewer. Margot saw right through Lady Vanessa. As the dots became fewer, the lady vanished. Margot shook her head slowly, scarcely believing what was happening.
With the disappearance of Lady Vanessa, the green glowing light was gone, the street darkened considerably save for the considerably more modest light of intermittent gas lamps. The lady no longer stood before the crowd. Most of the Marshals and stagehands had already climbed into the row of broughams, and only the pointing Marshal remained on the paving stones. He lowered his arm, glowered at the flabbergasted crowd, and turned to the carriage, where he hurried off to join his cohorts.
The elegantly-dressed theater-goers remained staring in shock as the coachmen called to their horses and snapped the reigns. The knees of one man who had been standing near Lady Vanessa buckled, and his nearest neighbors stopped him from dropping to the ground as he slid downward in a faint. One woman screamed, and many people turned and ran. The Montmorencys and their friends stood their ground. Someone trod on Margot’s foot, but she didn’t so much as flinch. It hardly mattered.
To Margot’s left, she thought she heard gasping breaths over the sound of many horses’ hooves clopping away and carriage wheels creaking and rolling. Dazed, with blurred vision, Margot turned toward where she last remembered seeing Vincent. She espied her cousin, whose face was so white it seemed to glow in the dark of night. His bright eyes were even larger than usual and staring unseeing in the general direction of where Lady Vanessa had vanished. Margot belatedly realized Vincent was gasping and trembling from head to toe and clutching his throat. Her first thought: this reminded him of Damian’s death.
“Vincent!” Margot hissed. Her cousin turned to her and reached out, grabbing her by the hand. She stared at him and squeezed his hand.
Roland stepped away from her other side and faced Vincent. “We must return to the carriage.” Roland scooped up Vincent and began carrying him toward their conveyance.
Settling into the barouche, Margot pictured the stagehands in the dark of the catwalks, pulling ropes to move scenery. She began wondering what such a life would be like. She shook her head and mentally chastised herself: this was no time for gentle reflection. This was a time for action. Hopefully the ball, if nothing else, would convince vast numbers of the people of London to rebel against the Ministry of Sensitive Corrections.