the bare skin above her stocking tops. She breathed through her muff to keep her voice from freezing.
Clover held fingers over her eyes, leaving only a narrow slit to see through, as her father had said the Esquimaux did in the farthest North. A shorter journey to the theatre today because they knew the way—Clover had noticed that before. Or because she was dreading this a little, the band call and how that would be.
Bella walked through the snow thinking of Gerda’s trail to the Snow Queen. Except Bella and her sisters were glad to be trapped in this palace. They would sing and dance for their supper because they were the luckiest, and too bad for poor Mr. Konigsburg. Her boots said Konigsburg-Konigsburg crunching over the snow. She wondered what Julius and Sybil were doing, where they had gone.
Mama’s tight, black-gloved hand was on the handle, but the door flew open of its own accord, and there was the Ninepins’ broom-boy, Nando Dent.
‘Mendel sent me to look out for you,’ he said, flat-planed face cracking into a creased grin. ‘Welcome, ladies!’
‘We are not behind time?’ Mama asked, anxious.
‘No, no, he wants to give you an extra bit, that’s all.’ Nando hurried them, still snow-dazzled, through the lobby, encouraging and clucking as if he were shooing chickens. He swung the inner door open, and the girls stopped in a clump—the velvet darkness again assailing them with its complicated smell and music. A little band assembled at the left in front of the stage was twiddling away: fiddle, clarinet, piano, one uncertain double bass. Another player, stretching his slide trombone to oil the long brass bones of it, inserted himself behind an array of odd percussion. Would they be heard over all that? Clover caught her cheek in her teeth and then let go. They were on their way. Her chest felt tight, and she could see the pulse jumping in Aurora’s tender neck. Bella did not seem at all affected.
‘It will be all right,’ Mama said, softer-toned. ‘You are very good girls and good performers, there is nothing to fret about.’
Her black hands pushed them in.
Bella skipped round the others and went first, Nando Dent bounding to run beside her down the slightly sloping floor to the small clear space in front of the stage. Half the chairs had been set up; part of the noise was the rest of them being crashed into place by a couple of skinny hands. Up on the stage Mr. Cleveland stood barking some order up into the fly gallery, then calling for ‘Silence!’
Which fell without delay, musicians and chair-movers milling around the house all stilled and expectant. Cleveland came forward to the lip of the stage and peered down, looking for Mendel. ‘When you are ready, Mr. Mendel, we may begin?’
‘Uno momento,’ Mendel called up from the piano.
Aurora watched Cleveland make his way down the moveable stairs and midway up the house to his station at a two-legged table propped on seat-backs, strewn with papers and props; a squat, ugly man sat scribbling there already and looked up to murmur something.
The musicians huddled around Mendel once more. Nando danced back and pulled at Mama’s sleeve. ‘Your sides? The band arrangements?’
‘Oh, mercy! I forgot. Here!’ Mama held out the worn piano music, and then (with a grimace, for she knew it betrayed their lack of experience) brand-new sides, on very crisp paper, for violin, woodwind and double bass. ‘But stay—is there a programme?’
He pulled one out of his pants pocket and bestowed it like a rose on the beloved, and Flora laughed and smacked at him affectionately, as if he were one of Arthur’s big-boy students. A nice boy, with easy manners and some thought for the feelings of others.
They took their seats in the front row, crowded with other artistes waiting their turn. Aurora, in the middle, held the programme so they could all see. A long slim booklet of flimsy pinkish paper, with Cleveland’s Empress Theatre on the front. She flipped over the pages, sifting through the rich black, decoratively lettered words, and finally—there—on the first page, all alone in a sea of advertisements, their new name:
THE BELLE AURORAS, ART SONGS OLD & NEW
So it must be real, Aurora thought.
‘Openers, yes, but we’ll work our way up from that, you’ll see!’ Mama whispered.
Pretty Little Gal
Aurora sat beside Clover and breathed through a light commotion in her stomach. This was only the band call—nothing, nothing to worry about.
Mendel’s hand rose and the musicians