Maskerade

“Walter!” repeated Agnes, out of sheer relief.

“Come for an explore have you? These ole tunnels goes all the way to the river! You have to keep your wits about you not to get lost down here! Want to come back with me?”

It was impossible to be frightened of Walter Plinge. Walter attracted a number of emotions, but terror wasn't among them.

“Er… yes,” said Agnes. “I got lost. Sorry.”

Greebo sat down and started to wash himself in what Agnes considered to be a supercilious way. If a cat could snigger, he would be sniggering.

“Now I've got a full sack I have to take it to Mister Gimlet's shop!” announced Walter, turning around and loping out of the cellar without bothering to see if she was following him. “We get a ha'penny each which is not to be sneezed at! The dwarfs think a rat is a good meal which only goes to show it would be a strange world if we were all alike!”

It seemed a ridiculously short journey to the foot of some different stairs, which had a well?used look to them.

“Have you ever seen the Ghost, Walter?” said Agnes, as Walter put his foot on the first step.

He didn't turn around. “It is wrong to tell lies!”

“Er… yes, so I believe. So… when did you last see the Ghost?”

“I last saw the Ghost in the big room in the ballet school!”

“Really? What did he do?”

Walter paused for a moment, and then the words came out all together. “He ran off?”

He stamped up the stairs in a way that suggested very emphatically that the exchange was over.

Greebo sneered at Agnes and followed him.

The stairs went up just one flight and came out through a trapdoor backstage. She had been lost only a door or two from the real world.

No one noticed her emerge. But then no one noticed her at all. They just assumed that she'd be around when she was needed.

Walter Plinge had already loped off, in something of a hurry.

Agnes hesitated. They probably wouldn't even notice she wasn't there, right up to the point when Christine opened her mouth…

He hadn't wanted to answer, but Walter Plinge spoke when spoken to and she had a feeling that he wasn't able to lie. Telling lies would be being bad.

She'd never seen the ballet school. It wasn't far backstage, but it was a world of its own. The dancers issued from it every day like so many very thin and twittering sheep under the control of elderly women who looked as though they breakfasted on pickled limes. It was only after she'd timidly asked a few questions of the stage?hands that she'd realized that the girls had joined the ballet because they'd wanted to.

She had seen the dancers' dressing?room, where thirty girls washed and changed in a space rather smaller than Bucket's office. It bore the same relationship to ballet as compost did to roses.

She looked around again. Still no one had paid any attention to her.

She headed for the school. It was up a few steps, along a foetid corridor lined with notice?boards and smelling of ancient grease. A couple of girls fluttered past. You never saw just one: they went around in groups, like mayflies. She pushed open the door and stepped into the school.

Reflections of reflections of reflections…

There were mirrors on every wall.

A few girls, practising on the bars that lined the room, looked up as she entered.

Mirrors…

Out in the passage she leaned against the wall and got her breath back. She'd never liked mirrors. They always seemed to be laughing at her. But didn't they say it was the mark of a witch, not liking to get between two mirrors? It sucked out your soul, or something. A witch would never get between two mirrors if she could help it…

But, of course, she very definitely wasn't a witch. So she took a deep breath, and went back into the room.

Images of herself stretched away in every direction.

She managed a few steps, then wheeled around and groped for the doorway again, watched by the surprised dancers.

Lack of sleep, she told herself. And general over-excitement. Anyway, she didn't need to go right into the room, now that she knew who the Ghost was.

It was so obvious. The Ghost didn't require any mysterious nonexistent caves when all he needed to do was hide where everyone could see him.

Mr Bucket knocked at the door of Salzella's office. A muffled voice said, “Come in.”

There was no one in the office, but there was another closed door in the far wall. Bucket knocked again, and then rattled the door handle.

“I'm in the bath,” said Salzella.

“Are you decent?”

“I'm fully clothed, if that's what you mean. Is there a pail of ice out there?”

“Was it you who ordered it?” said Bucket guiltily.

“Yes!”

“Only I, er, I had it taken to my office so I could stick my feet in it…”

“Your feet?”

“Yes. Er… I went for a brisk run around the city, don't know why, just felt like it…”

“Well?”

“My boots caught fire on the second lap.”

There was a sloshing noise and some sotto voce grumbling and then the door swung open, revealing Salzella in a purple dressing?gown.

“Has Senor Basilica been safely tethered?” he said, dripping on the floor.

“He's going through the music with Herr Trubelmacher.”

“And he's… all right?”

“He sent along to the kitchen for a snack.”

Salzella shook his head. “Astonishing.”

“And they've put the interpreter in a cupboard. They don't seem to be able to get him unfolded.”

Bucket sat down carefully. He was wearing carpet slippers.

“And—” Salzella prompted.

“And what?”

“Where did that dreadful woman go?”

“Mrs Ogg is showing her around. Well, what else could I do? Two thousand dollars, remember!”

“I am endeavouring to forget,” said Salzella. “I promise never to talk about that lunch ever again, if you don't either.”

“What lunch?” said Bucket innocently.

“Well done.”

“She does seem to have an amazing effect though, doesn't she…”

“I don't know who you are talking about.”

“I mean, it's not hard to see how she made her money…”

“Good heavens, man, she's got a face like a hatchet!”

“They say that Queen Ezeriel of Klatch had a squint, but that didn't stop her having fourteen husbands, and that was only the official score. Besides, she's knocking on a bit…”

“I thought she'd been dead for two hundred years!”

“I'm talking about Lady Esmerelda.”

“So am I.”