A—what? Was Ninette’s reaction. What was a Brownie? Some sort of mouse? Or worse still, a rat?
It’s quite all right, McKenzie, I invited him, said the cat.
“Oh well, it’s all right then. Your pardon for interrupting you,” she said, without turning a hair. “Your pardon, but I was preparing m’lady’s lunch. I shall be in the kitchen if you require me.”
“And I’ll show you about,” said Nigel, looking just a trifle smug.
But Ninette wasn’t ready to be shown her new flat just yet. “She heard you!” she said, in a tone of accusation.
Of course. Monsieur Nigel would not have hired an ordinary servant for you. That could have been a problem. Correct, Monsieur?
“Very much so,” Nigel replied, and turned to Ninette. “Miss McKenzie is not a magician, but she is able to see the same things that you are. We refer to her abilities as being a ‘Sensitive.’ You will not need to hide anything from her.”
Ninette nodded, with some relief. At least she was not going to have to explain the cat away! “But—how?” she asked in English.
“Our sort of folk need servants, servants we can trust, after all,” Nigel chuckled. “I simply let it be known I needed a maidservant for my famous dancer, and one was forthcoming.”
Somehow she doubted that it was quite that simple, but she was willing to let that pass. The tour of the flat took very little time, although the enjoyment she knew she would have in a more leisurely examination of its delights would occupy her for a while to come. When they were finished, Miss McKenzie had a really admirable luncheon laid out for them, which they sat down to enjoy.
“Excellent, McKenzie,” Nigel said, when she had cleared the last of it away.
“Och, well, that would be due to our landlord, sir,” McKenzie replied. “’Twas he that brought it all up; I just needed to keep it warm for you.”
“Ah, now that reminds me,” Nigel said, and began explaining the various meal arrangements she could make. “It’s all because this is theatrical lodgings, you see,” he concluded. “Players eat at odd times, they generally don’t know enough about the matter to keep a good cook, and they don’t stay long. Not as a rule, anyway.”
Ninette shook her head. It all seemed so irregular to her. “We change programme,” she said, finally. “Not theater.”
“A more sensible way, to be sure.” Nigel nodded. “At any rate, if you want company, you can go down and dine with the others. If you don’t, they’ll send it up, or McKenzie there can arrange something. The meals will be plain and simple, so if you’re longing for beefsteak, or pheasant, or anything of that sort, you’ll have to send out for it.”
She nodded; it was definitely a sensible arrangement, if a trifle peculiar. But it made sense.
“I’ll leave you to settle in,” Nigel said genially. “You can skip practice for one afternoon, I should think?”
She nodded, and McKenzie showed him out.
Now the work began in earnest.
Ninette spent all of one afternoon, on a day when the theater had no matinee, showing Nigel, Arthur, Jonathon, and Wolf all of her little “tricks.” These were, of course, the sort of things that dancers like La Augustine despised—dancing with the ribbon-wand, the ball, and the hoop, skirt dancing with yards and yards and yards of the lightest silk fabric to make ever-moving curtains that light could be played against. And she showed her other tricks, the showpieces that dancers like La Augustine did not despise, although they might pretend to; the solos from Swan Lake and Tales of Hoffman, from Bayadere and Giselle, from Don Quixote and Corsair.
All these things the men loved, and when she was done, exhausted and dripping with sweat, she looked out into the empty theater to see the four of them chattering away like so many rooks, planning what tricky bit should go where in their story.
Wolf was now supposed to write music—or at least adapt it—for all of this, but he seemed to be in a frenzy of delight, and no one ventured to trouble him or Arthur as they sat at the piano, Wolf dictating the music without a pause until they were both often found slumped over the keyboard, the parrot standing with one foot up and head hunched down, on the nape of Arthur’s neck.
Nor was Jonathon idle, concocting a tremendous stage-business for the Sultan’s burning palace, as well as adapting or reviving several more of his feats of illusion.
Nigel was busy filling in the spaces between Ninette’s performances and Jonathon’s with other acts. They had to be steady, reliable, and with a minimum of traits that might bring them into conflict with others. This would not be a case where in two weeks, each would go his separate ways. These people, like the theatrical and dance companies she knew, would stay together for months. Little irritations could escalate into harassment, into all-out feuds. It was Nigel’s job to see to it that the people he invited to this production were not the kind to escalate.
The plot was a simple one. In the Prologue, a ship would be caught in a storm; they had determined that only a segment of this ship would appear on stage, tossing on the artificial waves. There would be cries of “man overboard” and a dummy of her would be tossed down into the waves. This would not be the first nor the last appearance of the hapless dummy. . . .
She would do a skirt dance among the waves to make it appear that she was drowning, or at least, swimming for her life. She would clear the stage, and then the ship would sink.
In the first act, she would be lying on a “beach,” unconscious, and the Sultan’s men would find her. They would carry her off, and the curtain would rise on the Sultan’s palace. This gave the opportunity for several acts to come on stage to entertain the Sultan. Chief among them, of course, would be Jonathon. He would play the Sultan’s Vizier, who enforced the Sultan’s edicts with his magic. He would make some poor wretch turn into a chicken or some such thing—they hadn’t quite decided what animal they would use, perhaps even a dog—and then the new harem captives would be brought in. Nigel would have to hire dancers for this, but he had some experience with hiring actors and dancers for something called “the Panto,” so she expected he could manage that.
Then it would be her turn. Begging and pleading with the Sultan to send her back to her people, she would be refused, and ordered to dance. This is when she would do her hoop, ribbon, and ball dances.
There would be more entertainment for the Sultan, interspersed with a very clever idea on Nigel’s part. A scrim would drop down between the audience and the Sultan’s court, and everyone would freeze in place like a tableaux vivant. Then the lights would come down on the Sultan’s Court. Then two footlights would come up, one on a ballad singer, and one on her, apparently gazing out of a window. The ballad singer would perform a number about England or home, while she sighed in her captivity. Then the lights out front would come down, she and the singer would exit under cover of the darkness, and the lights would come back up on the Sultan’s Palace.
The Sultan would demand for her to dance again. This time it would be one of the ballet solos she knew so well. Then the Sultan would begin courting her.
“Now why,” Wolf had demanded, “is he going to court her when logic says he could simply take her?”
“Fairy tale logic, old bird,” Arthur had replied absently, “She’s a virtuous English girl and therefore the only thoughts that enter the Sultan’s head are those of honor and decency,” Then he had made that little exclamation that meant he had puzzled out what he was working on. “Try this out for your hoop-dance,” he had said, and began to play a melody. As she went through her planned choreography in her mind, everything else was forgotten.