CHAPTER 28

THE PIG-HEADED WOMAN AND THE HAND OF GLORY

Lucy twisted and grabbed futile handfuls of air as she tried to stop herself falling into the mirror, but it did no good. She hit the glass hard, but instead of a hard crack she felt no more than a slight but distinct pop as she passed through it, tumbling right out of the Red Library as if the mirrored surface was a thin membrane like a soap bubble–and then the bright light was gone and she was falling into a dark space full of shouting and crashing and pitching lanterns which seemed to throw more shadows than light.

And as she sprawled onto what felt like grass she saw a completely different mirror ahead of her being toppled sideways by a big woman in a calico dress and matching bonnet.

In the instant before it crashed and smashed, she saw the reflection of Sara Falk reaching for her out of the Red Library within a second mirror behind her–the mirror in fact out of which she had clearly just tumbled. Sara was calling her name while being held back by Cook and Mr Sharp–then she saw the blur of the cobra striking the other side of the cabinet beneath Sara’s arm, and the Red Library shivered and dissolved into fragments as the falling mirror hit a barrel and splintered, destroying the vision entirely. In its place she saw the woman who had knocked it over looking at her and Lucy choked back a scream because the woman was not a real woman at all but a nightmare thing in a dress.

The eyes that met hers were not human. They were pig’s eyes and the head within the bonnet was pink and jowly and snouty, the blunted animal nose snuffling, the ears flapping wildly on either side as the thing showed its teeth and roared at her in red-mouthed anger.

In a snatched moment of clarity she realised she was looking at a full-grown woman with the head of a pig and the snarl of something darker and more insistently feral.

She wanted to scream but knew escaping danger was always better than screaming at it, so she turned to flee, only to find herself facing a small crowd of people running at her out of the dancing shadows, at the front of which was an impossibly wasp-waisted woman, her mouth a perfect “O” of shock, framed between a lush moustache and a beard like a spade.

She paused and in that moment was lost, as her foot skittered on a piece of broken mirror and she fell again. The pig-headed woman snarled and lurched forwards, straddling her.

For an instant she thought it was all over as the woman drew back a hand to strike her, and then someone jumped between them, a wiry young man stripped to the waist, carrying a flaming torch in one hand and a mop in the other.

“No, Nellie!” he shouted. “Back, I say!”

Lucy’s rescuer faced down the pig-headed woman who was now roaring and slashing freakishly large gloved hands at him as he backed her away from Lucy’s prone figure. He took a quick look down at her, and she saw his face was shockingly different from his lean torso, being smeared in white paint with black crosses painted over his eyes above a large red nose like a tomato.

He nodded at her and then dodged round to shout at the pig-headed woman in a voice that was unexpectedly cheerful and full of good humour.

“No, Big Nellie. No! Leave her alone you great puddin’. She don’t mean no harm!”

He turned and waved impatiently at the gathering crowd beyond Lucy.

“Oi, someone cut along sharpish and get Big Nellie a bun; buns always calms her down, don’t it?” He turned back to the pig-headed woman and smiled. “We’ll get you a nice iced bun with a cherry on top, Nellie girl, only give the little lady space to breathe, eh? You’re frightening the life out of her!”

He flicked a wink at Lucy, who was as disconcerted enough by his distinctly friendly tone as everything else around her.

“Be right as spanners in a minute, my girl. Big Nellie’d rather a bun than a bust-up. It’s just her nerves, see?”

And true to his words, the pig-headed woman grunted and backed away further, her mouth closing and her head dropping as if she were ashamed. Lucy took the young man’s outstretched hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. Only then did she remember to breathe.

“Cauchemar,” she said. “C’est un cauchemar…?”

“What she say?” shrilled the bearded woman.

“Nightmare,” said a cultured voice from the back of the crowd. “She said it’s a nightmare.”

“Didn’t sound like that,” said the young man.

“She said it in French,” said the voice.

“French?” said her rescuer. “Blimey.”

He reached up and pulled off his red nose, just as politely as if removing his hat, and then swept into a theatrical bow.

“Well then–bong-joower, mamzel,” he smiled. “And what are you a-doing at the circus in your nightdress at this late hour?”

Lucy caught the word “circus” and for a moment allowed herself to believe she was not trapped in a nightmare, that Big Nellie and the clown-faced boy and the bearded lady were explainable denizens of a travelling show. She was about to smile in relief when she saw, behind the boy, something like a crab spidering across the broken glass towards her.

It was a disembodied black hand, and it was trying to get to her.

For the first time in her life, and one that she would not forgive herself for, she stumbled back and fainted.

What she missed, as her eyes rolled back into her head, was seeing someone dart out of the shadows and scoop up the hand before anyone else had had a chance to notice it.

The person with the hand swiftly bundled it under their jacket and slipped through the crowd of circus folk, sliding through a gap in the tent wall and out into the fairground beyond, a sea of tents and wagons set up on a patch of common ground outside a village, bounded by a rough thorn hedge.

There were smoking oil lamps and pitch torches by the tents and even, at the very centre of everything, some of the new bright naphtha lamps.

Most of the wagons were painted in varying degrees of garishness, and so were the tents and even some of the people, for they were clearly show-people and, where they were not, they were villagers and country-folk dressed up for all the fun of the fair.

But there was now no sign of fun to be had at this fair. The day was over and the showmen’s booths were closing up.

The person walked fast, holding the hidden hand tightly to their chest, moving from shadow to shadow with the kind of controlled speed of someone who wants to escape, but not be seen to be escaping.

Moving away from the centre of the fair, the figure picked up the pace as they reached the less well-lit cordon of showpeople’s wagons arranged around the perimeter as if confident that no one was now going to observe them.

No one was.

But there was a dog.

The dog chained to a stake outside a tent saw the person passing and ran forwards without warning, like a shadow suddenly solidifying into a snarl of teeth, muscle and wild eyes, barking excitedly.

The person kicked the dog. Hard.

There was a yelp of pain.

The dog rolled on the grass.

The person looked back.

The barking did not attract attention. No one saw the dog or the kick.

The person slipped through a gap in the rough hedge and scrambled up into the hooped canvas tent covering the back of the last wagon on the very edge of the camp.

There was no light in this wagon but the person didn’t need it. At the far end of the cramped space there was a small iron stove bolted to the floor. Behind the stove a tin box, and in the box there was sea-coal.

The coal was scrabbled aside, revealing another box, a padlocked iron case hidden beneath the fuel.

The person unlocked the lid and lifted it, swiftly tipping the rag-bundled hand into the case with a light but meaty thump. The lid slammed down, the lock clicked, the key was removed, the coal scrabbled back and then there was only the creaking sound of the person sitting heavily back on the low-slung rocking chair in front of the fire and the words, spoken so low, and the glee in it so whispered that anyone overhearing it would have been hard-pushed to say if the speaker was a man, woman… or even perhaps a child:

“Manus Gloriae, Manus Gloriae indeed. We are saved.”

But no one overheard. Nothing moved in the wagon.

Nothing except the hand, scrabbling blindly in the pitch-black darkness of the iron box hidden beneath the jumbled sea-coal.