Undertow (Whyborne & Griffin #8.5)(5)
Odd, how I’d come to think of Widdershins as home, rather than New Bedford. I’d been subjected to strange and frightening incidents since coming here, things I could never have dreamed of before. By all rights I should have taken my leave of the city and retreated somewhere safer. Yet Mother’s letters, pleading with me to return and get married, left me cold. I somehow felt as though I belonged here, in a way I never had anywhere else.
Irene returned, and we went into the auditorium to find our seats. Tumblers performed on the stage while the audience settled, and Oliver seemed to forget his concern over Mr. Quinn, laughing along with Irene and myself at their antics.
When at last the audience was seated, the tumblers withdrew, and a man stepped onto the stage. He wore a slightly old-fashioned coat, and his hair and beard were iron gray. Still, he seemed hale, his movements easy as he bowed to us all with a flourish.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice rang through the theater, his tone oddly authoritative. “Welcome to the grand opening of the Undertow. I am your humble host, Gregory Ayers.” He bowed again, and was rewarded by a smattering of applause. “We have chosen to christen our new home with a play of our own devising. A tale of intrigue in distant courts, of strange visitors welcome and not, of masks and the secrets dwelling in the hearts of men. Tonight, you will see things never before viewed by an audience!”
Irene leaned over me, pointing at the program. “Look—the character of the siren is played by Miss Joanna Ayers. His daughter, do you think?”
“Or grand-daughter, given his age,” I replied. Then the orchestra struck up the first chords, and the curtain rose upon the scene of a throne room.
At first, I was quite swept up in the play. It concerned the struggle for the throne between siblings—two sisters and their brother, the latter having recently returned from a long sea voyage. But after the first act, it began to grow strange. The prince was haunted by visions of a woman, who seemed to have followed him from the sea. She begged him to love her, but he spurned her advances and fled. None of the other characters could see her, and I was uncertain whether she was meant to be a supernatural curse upon the prince, or merely a hallucination.
“I’m not quite sure I understand this modern theater,” Irene whispered to me.
“Agreed,” I whispered back.
The play culminated in a masquerade ball. I’d long since lost the thread of the plot, but the costumes were beautiful, paste jewels glittering in the stage lights. The masks were elaborate fantasies: wolves, doves, deer, and dragons.
So it was even more of a shock when the siren appeared in the midst of the revelers, wearing a featureless mask that looked to have been carved from bone. The only decoration on her mask consisted of a small cabochon of colored glass set into the forehead, surrounded by a single engraved sigil or rune.
The other characters fell away before her, save for the prince. Siren and prince faced each other down the length of the stage. The orchestra stilled, and for a long moment, there was only silence.
Then the siren began to sing.
I didn’t recognize the language—perhaps it was even nonsense, invented for the play. Her voice seemed to fill the very air with a tangible presence.
The prince collapsed to the stage and began to dramatically crawl toward her. His doom come upon him.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Oliver whispered.
It wasn’t. I didn’t want the siren to murder the prince. I wanted him to realize his mistake, to see how he’d hurt her by rejecting her love, and to fall in love with her in turn. But apparently it wasn’t that sort of play.
I turned to Irene, intending to ask her opinion. She stared fixedly at the stage, her eyes wide, her expression slack. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out, and her skin had gone deathly pale.
Something was wrong. “Irene?” I whispered, touching her wrist. Her skin was clammy under my fingers. “Are you sick?”
She made no response, didn’t so much as glance at me. Her gaze remained fixed on the stage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the prince reach the siren, where he would no doubt come to the most grisly of ends. Had the spectacle proved too disturbing for Irene?
“Do you need to leave?” I gave her a little shake, but it was as though she didn’t even know I was there. “Irene?”
The prince flung himself hopelessly at the siren’s feet. The music swelled, the siren raised a knife, and her song reached a crescendo almost great enough to drown out Irene’s scream.
*
“Is Miss Vale going to be all right?” Oliver asked. We stood on the sidewalk in front of the boarding house. As no men were allowed inside after dark, I’d been forced to see Irene in alone. I’d told Oliver not to bother waiting, but he’d insisted.
I crossed my arms over my chest against the chill of the night air. Fog had rolled in off the ocean, and I could hear the distant call of the Daboll trumpet. The damp only served to make the atmosphere feel colder. “She’ll be fine,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely certain of it. She’d seemed disoriented the entire way back from the theater. “Perhaps something she ate didn’t agree with her.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Though I saw the ushers had to help her friend Mr. Burton out as well.”
I’d been too focused on Irene to notice. “That’s strange.”
Oliver hesitated, then asked, “How well do you know Miss Vale?”