They performed exactly as she expected them to. They had clearly prepared for her, and now they fled before her, and opened the door to the cellar with cringing deference. She stood on the top step as they closed the door behind her, and listened to the whimpering of terror from below.
The Troll bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. Her servants had chosen well. Not one, but three victims cowered in the corners of the cellar, trying to somehow become one with the rough brick walls. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she assessed the two slatternly women and the man awaiting her pleasure. By the tattered finery and the display of cleavage, by the too-loud, cheap suit and the air of a bully who finds himself in the power of someone unexpectedly stronger than he, she had a good notion of who her servants had plucked off the street for her. Two prostitutes, and she supposed the man was their procurer.
“Mistress,” one of the servants said through the door, “we brought the women here. The man followed; he broke in and threatened us, and demanded money.” She smiled. Good. She would take him first.
And she would make him last a long, long time. This was going to be no simple absorption. Tonight she was going to feed.
20
NINETTE was summoned in the middle of her exercises to Nigel’s office; puzzled, because she could not imagine what could have warranted such an interruption, she quickly toweled herself off and threw on her dress without bothering to tidy her hair or take off her rehearsal tights and demi-pointe shoes.
There she found Nigel, Arthur, Wolf, and Jonathon, all bent over something on Nigel’s desk, and the humans, at least, looking rather grim.
“What is amiss?” she asked, feeling uneasy, as they all turned to look at her.
“We have an unexpected problem,” Arthur replied, stabbing his finger down at what was now revealed to be a folded-back section of a newspaper. There were several more like it on the desk; Arthur picked this one up and handed it to her.
The first thing she saw was her own publicity photograph, taken in her costume of the Tudor Rose dance. Dancer Revealed A Fraud! shouted the headline.
Her heart in her mouth, she skimmed through the article as best she could, wrestling with the English. Quickly she got the gist of the matter. The real Nina Tchereslavsky had turned up—and how had that happened?—and the reporter was trumpeting the fact that Ninette was an imposter. He did not quite go so far as to claim her shipwreck story was the fabrication they all knew it was, but it would not take much for people to wonder about that, too.
At the bottom of the article was the photograph of the real Nina Tchereslavsky, in a costume of the Rose Fairy from Sleeping Beauty. Ninette stared at it, numbly.
“All right. What are we going to do?” Nigel demanded. “It is not exactly a front page matter at the moment, but if there is a day that has not got a lot of news in it, the story very well could soon be there. Should we—”
You are going to brazen it out, said Thomas the cat, strolling into the room in a leisurely manner, eyeing the top of the desk for a moment, before leaping up to it in a lithe bound. Take a look at those photographs. Do you think I chose that particular dancer at random for Ninette to impersonate?
Five heads bent over the newspapers, all of them analyzing the two pictures. As Ninette’s panic started to ebb, she looked over the two, side by side, and after a moment, she nodded. She looked up to see the same conclusion in the faces of the rest.
“All things considered, there is not a great deal of difference between the two of them,” Nigel admitted.
All ballerinas tend to look a great deal alike, the cat pointed out. That’s out of necessity. They have to be petite, light boned, thin. They tend to have very large eyes, and stage makeup exaggerates that. That newspaper man made a grave mistake in choosing to echo Ninette’s Rose costume with the other woman’s; the pictures could easily be of the same dancer in different costumes. So the obvious course here is to make the counter-claim that this woman is the imposter.
Nigel stared at the cat. “You’re not joking, are you?”
I never joke. I sometimes make witty remarks, often sarcastic ones, but I never joke, not where Ninette is concerned. No, I think you should brazen it out. Claim that this woman is the imposter.
“What possible motive could she have for impersonating Ninette? I mean Nina?” Arthur ran his hands through his hair. “This is very confusing. . . .”
The cat raised his chin. Ninette is very successful here. She is one of the main attractions to this theater, and when your new musical play is finally performed, that popularity will only increase. Now remember if you will that people are insular. It does not matter to a Londoner that a performer is popular in New York. He might go once to see the man, but unless all London decides he is good, the average Londoner will not go a second time.
“What are you saying?” Arthur asked, puzzled.
That we should forget entirely what anyone in Berlin or New York or even Paris thinks. That we should forget what a balletomane thinks. Ninette’s audience does not go to ballets, and does not care what the rich people that do would have to say about this. We need to concentrate on what Blackpool thinks.
“I see what you are saying,” Nigel replied slowly. “Blackpool thinks that what Blackpool says and does and has opinions about is of the first importance in the world.”
The cat nodded with satisfaction. Precisely. So when we go and speak to your friends in the newspapers here, we must be firm in saying that our Nina is the real one, and that this imposter’s attempt to take her place is motivated by the greed for the position Ninette has achieved here. What dancer would not wish to be in that position? That any sensible person from outside Blackpool or knowledgeable about ballet would find this laughable has no bearing. This will not even be a ripple in the London papers, but it might well move into greater importance here. Perhaps, as you yourself pointed out, even a front page story if there are no accidents, fires, murders, or notorious robberies. No, I think that the best thing we can do is respond with affronted dignity and a touch of scorn. The cat licked a paw thoughtfully. And one never knows with dancers. They often become hysterical over absolute nonsense. She might indeed decide for herself that what you are building for Ninette is of the primary importance to her.
“Hysterical over nonsense?” Ninette looked incensed—and then, flushed. “Ah, mais oui. The review in La Figaro—“
And who knows? Somehow the cat managed to shrug. We do not know how her reputation is faring on the Continent. It might be sinking. She cannot be young. It might be that to become the star of a music hall in Blackpool has become the height of desire for her. In any event, we very much need to make use of every chink in her armor. Including that. The cat looked up at them all. This does have the potential to do us a great deal of good, if we can keep our heads about us, and Ninette can be kind and gracious and say very little about what her life in Russia was like.
“I can do that,” Ninette said ruefully, “since I have no notion of what it could have been like!”
“You should describe what it was like in Paris, only don’t mention any real names,” Jonathon said firmly. “A dancer’s life is always the same no matter where she is from. Only in Moscow the winters are very long, there are heaps of snow, and it is always terribly cold. Make much of that.”