The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

walk. Pausing, he noticed something on his ruffled collar and picked at it, annoyed. It was blood. “Curio,” he spat before starting toward the Great Maze.

I followed behind him with heavy footsteps. “What on earth did Curio do to deserve that? You cut out his tongue like a barbarian.”

He spun in the narrow aisle between the hedgerows to face me. “I assure you, Curio ate his own tongue.”

“Hardly,” I snorted. From my position at the entrance to the maze, I could see Curio’s shiny patent shoes still trembling.

“Cecile.” Father tapped his cane. “Get on with it.”

Swallowing hard, I found fury at every word he spoke. This creature had stolen my memories, my childhood. Thanks to him, I was a ship with no compass. As I watched Doro lift Curio to his feet, I became enraged. They’d both lost their voices at Father’s hand. My fists tightened and I didn’t mince words. “I understand that you felt I wasn’t strong enough to remember my own childhood.”

By habit, Father’s cane tapped impatiently, but when it stopped abruptly, I knew that I’d made a grave miscalculation. I wanted to pull my words back immediately, but it was too late. So quiet was he that, somewhere in a distance, I could hear a single croquet ball connecting with another; laughter ensued, followed by the sound of a porcelain teacup returning to its saucer.

“Who told you that?” I could see the features that he tried to hide slide through his mask.

“No one,” I said defiantly. Yet as I spoke, I wondered what it would feel like if he made me bite my own tongue off right now for talking to him so harshly. Would he do that to his own daughter? With his handsome visage and witty humor, I find he is often underestimated, but I know better.

“Of course, someone told you these things, Cecile.” The calm lilt of his voice was disarming.

“Is it true?” Taking a deep breath, I fumbled with the piping on my skirt, trying to refocus the conversation.

He faced me, and the corner of his lip turned up. Father is a vain creature, having perfected his mortal look—handsome, ageless—yet small traces of his true essence peek through, the white tuft of chin hair, the hint of dished ears. His soft curls nearly touch his collar, and his amber eyes are wide and child-like but have a hint of his horizontal pupils. When he was weary or, in this case, livid, his mortal “coat” often slid off. “Was it Plutard?” He spat her name.

“No,” I said, recoiling in fear for our costumer.

“Sylvie, then?”

“God, no.” But the mention of her name was confirmation that, as I had suspected, she knew more than she let on.

“Then it was your sister.” His voice was less urgent now, so sure that he had identified his culprit. Now he could cut out the rot and restore order in his circus.

Even though she has taunted and humiliated me, I suddenly feared for Esmé. This had been a terrible, terrible mistake. I had been angry at Esmé for years of gibes and innuendos. Like a child, I’d wanted Father to intervene, to make her stop. In a way, I wanted a little revenge on her. The idea of him doling out a fitting punishment to her—like no outside trips for a few weeks—felt justified to me. Just the thought of her watching Sylvie and myself leave through the door was strangely satisfying, but from the pulsing vein on his temple, I had been a wicked fool. Despite the fact that she was his daughter, I sensed her punishment would be severe. I had not figured on this.

“It doesn’t matter.” I tried to match his calmness, measure for measure, allowing him to think the information she’d given me was trivial and that I was not affected by it.

“But it does, my dear. It most certainly does matter. She knows better.”

This was a curious thing for him to say. While I have thought my sister cruel for her hints, it had never occurred to me that she was not permitted to tell me about our own shared childhood. What happened to me to cause this secrecy?

April 7, 1925

Esmé disappeared this morning.

Her bedroom door was ajar, her beloved perfume bottles shattered, the bedcovers pulled violently from the mattress, and the slipper chair overturned. At the doorframe, I spied marks where her nails had dug into the wood in an attempt to fight off whatever had taken her. Next I ran from room to room, alerting everyone to what I’d found. Frantically, I searched the dressing room, the mazes, the horse stalls. Nothing. The realization came to me that I was the only person hunting for her. The other performers lowered their heads in affirmation that they already knew she was gone. Charging down the hall, I pounded furiously at Madame Plutard’s oddly locked door, but she refused to let me in.

It was as though the entire circus had shuttered up tight and left me outside.

April 10, 1925

After three days with no word of Esmé, I was almost feverish. I’d scratched my arms raw from worry until they bled. Father had gone again and refused my requests to be summoned back. Finally, I tried one more attempt at Madame Plutard’s room, banging on the door wildly until she finally opened it. “Yes?” Her tone was cold, distant.

“When will she be coming back?” I realized that I hadn’t bathed in days and my hair was matted.

“She may never be coming back, you little fool.” The older woman’s face registered such a look of disgust that I almost didn’t recognize her. “Your mother would have been so disappointed in you.” With that, she shut the door in my face.

And at that moment I knew that she was correct. With a mixture of fury and stupidity, I’d likely led my sister to her death. Esmé had been right all along. I was nothing.

This evening,