LITMIR.BIZ

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the possibility.

      ‘I don’t care,’ he insisted to the others. ‘I’m going to London. I’ll be rich, I’m telling you. I’ll have – I’ll live in a house bigger than Park House. With a butler and maidservants, and lamps to light all the rooms like a palace.’

      Sophy Button sneezed and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

      Devil summoned up his determination. He could feel his power leaking out of him and its loss was intolerable, so he pinned a smile across his face.

      ‘Tell everyone to come. Before I go I’ll show them a spectacle to remember me by.’

      After the Buttons had left Devil sat down to wait. There was silence except for the rustling of rats under the hay.

      The news spread quickly enough. As twilight came a little file of contemporaries and smaller children flitted and crept towards the barn.

      One of the books in his possession described a trick called the Inferno. Devil loved playing with fire and he had read through the description often enough, although he had never actually tried it out. But now he was ready to do every last thing he could to impress this small world before exchanging it for the bigger one. He had to save his own face by leaving Stanmore on a drum roll and a crash of cymbals.

      There were twenty spectators gathered in the darkened barn. Only one of them had thought to bring a lantern, and there was no other light except for the box of lucifers that Jasper had been instructed to provide. Devil’s arms ached and his fingers were as stiff as wooden clothes pins. He fumbled with a lit taper, holding the wavering flame poised above a little figure he had made out of plaited straw. It was supposed to be a bowl of golden fish, but desperate times called for extreme improvisation. It was satisfying to think how demonic he would be looking with the taper’s light licking his face and deepening the shadows in his eye sockets.

      Sophy Button sneezed again and Devil jumped. At the same time a gust of wind caught the barn door and slammed it shut. With the jitters in his blood Devil swung round to see who was coming. The taper spat a stream of sparks into the dusty air and the hay caught fire in a dozen different places.

      The audience sat gaping, imagining this was the very spectacle they had been invited to see. Devil threw himself at the spurts of fire but as soon as he had stamped out one another flickered to life with a whisper like an evil rumour spreading. In a matter of seconds a wall of flames roared up to the barn roof. Poor Gabe was laughing, haw-haw-haw, and thudding his hands together in raucous applause.

      ‘Good un!’ he yelled.

      ‘Get outside!’ Devil bawled.

      Most of the spectators were on their feet now, staring uncertainly from the fire to the barn door and back to Devil again, expecting him to work some magic that would restore the hay to its original state. Devil ran to the door and threw it open and a great gust of air was sucked in, fanning the blaze and sending a pall of smoke to stifle and blind them all.

      ‘Get out of here.’ This was Jasper, who was dragging one of his sisters by the arm. Children coughed and choked as they stumbled over each other. One by one they spilled out into the sweet darkness. Devil ran dementedly through the smoke, thinking of his precious books being consumed by the fire. He knew that there was no hope of beating out these flames, and that his childhood was burning up along with the hay. He was taken by the elemental urge to run, to hide, to escape the inescapable. He found his way out into the cold air and gathered himself for flight.

      Then he heard Jasper yelling for Gabe. Staring out of the darkness they could all see that vast black clouds were rolling out of the barn and that the interior was an inferno, no trickery.

      Wired with terror Devil ran back towards the blaze, sensing rather than seeing Jasper racing alongside him. They both stopped as a black silhouette appeared against the roaring barn, its margins fretted by flame. Gabe staggered towards them, arms outstretched. The sleeves of his old coat, his breeches, even his hair was on fire. The boy was screaming. He dropped to his knees and then fell prone as the others swarmed about him to try to beat out the flames.

      Jasper pulled Devil’s collar.

      ‘Run,’ he said. ‘Run before the bobby gets here.’

      Sophy Button howled like an animal.

      ‘My ma said you were the devil’s spawn, Hector Crumhall. She did.’

      As he ran down the hollow way and across the fields, his feet pounding over the familiar ground, Devil was thinking that he had killed a halfwit boy. The other thought was that Jasper’s poor drunken mother, a sodden bag of bones and wet gums and muttered curses, considered that he was a devil.

      The next night he slept in another barn. The nightmares of fire and Gabe’s screaming were terrible, and when he was awake and walking he was so sure the spectre of the burning boy was following him that he had to keep turning and looking over his shoulder.

      The evening after that he was in the heart of London. Grand carriages and hansom cabs and handcarts crowded the streets as money and filth fought for supremacy. Exhausted, he sank down at a street corner and looked up to the gable end of a building across the way. It was painted with elaborate curling letters that read:

      In his weary, famished state the word trick took on great significance. This was a message aimed at him. He was going to be a magician, the best on the London stage. He needed a new name, because Hector Crumhall had killed a boy.

      Devil Wix.

      The black shape outlined in flame ran at him out of dark places. Even when he was wide awake it came at him. The screams still sounded in his ears, louder even than the din of the city. If he was no longer Hector Crumhall, perhaps he could escape the apparition?

      Devil Wix.

      ‘You’re going to drop my china cup.’ Jasper took it from his hand. Devil woke with a shudder. He rubbed his face and looked at the kettle on the hob, and at the bag beside him that contained Carlo’s decapitated head.

      ‘I’ll be on my way. You’ll come to see the show, Jas, won’t you?’

      ‘If you give me a ticket.’

      ‘It’ll be worth a tanner or two of anyone’s money.’

      ‘Not mine,’ Jasper sniffed.

      The two of them briefly embraced, like the old friends they were. Neither of them had spoken of Stanmore for years. Mr Crumhall had followed his wife to the churchyard, the Buttons had drunk themselves to death, and Jasper’s two sisters were gone into service. In their different ways the two boys were doing their best to better themselves.

       THREE

      As Jacko Grady had said it would be, the Palmyra was partly restored. The charred ruins of stage and seating were carted away, the worst of the soot was rinsed from the walls and the pillars. The box fronts were crudely repainted, obliterating the ruined gilding, and carpenters sawed and hammered to create a new stage. Grady obtained a set of curtains, well used on some other stage. The cloth was faded and the folds exuded plumes of acrid dust. The owner was out to make some quick money and he invested as little as possible in his restoration. The theatre was still a shabby place, with none of the colour and opulence its structure called for.

      The trapdoors Devil and Carlo required were cut and hinged and tested with care. Backstage on Jacko Grady’s grand opening night, Devil sat on an upturned bucket listening and waiting.

      He was obliged to acknowledge disappointment. That it was a poor audience came as no great surprise, although he had hoped for better. It was true that the gallery was filled almost to capacity, but the crowd in these cheapest seats was composed mostly of rowdy young men. They came in search of novelty, spectacle and vulgar comedy, and they were ready to express their dissatisfaction when these were not immediately forthcoming.

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